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Comment by davak | Hacker News Reader

Imagine you are in a small hospital room and unable to get out. A 300 pound 6'2 dude is yelling that he's going to kill you. His brain is so scrambled that the tazor did nothing. You are backed into a corner and he's walking toward you.

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In an age where such places have surveillance video you would think we don't need hypothetical scenarios. We'd have video of someone taking a solid hit from a Tazer and continuing an attack. But let's try this hypothetical: Imagine you are in a country without armed private security and only a subset of police are armed. Where are all the people who've been killed by 300 lbs crazed people?

They are in the imagination of armed officers, which is all the the law requires :-(

It's not that hard to find instances of crazed people committing murder or other serious acts of violence.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3356115/Alabama-man-...

http://mtstandard.com/crime-and-courts/missoula-motel-murder...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arizona-man-meth-se...

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/04/fort_pay...

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/compensation-for-mother-of...

http://somd.com/news/headlines/2016/20355.php

European nations will likely have fewer such problems than we do - our population is much more violent. As Scott Alexander once quipped, "Who'd have thought populating half a country with the descendants of a group of people called "Border Reavers" would cause so much trouble?"

https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex/status/672540086932779009

I'm not trying to say that the police were justified in this incident - note that I'm a huge critic of American policing. I'm merely pointing out that the threat is quite real.

That's not what I was asking. I was asking: Does armed security, or, for that matter, armed police make for fewer such cases.

There are places where security guards and police do without guns in normal duties. Perhaps it's, at least in part, because policing and security sets the tone, that they have to do more deescalation before drawing a gun, that they have less violence.

[EDIT:] Has anyplace ever become more safe by putting more guns in the hands of armed security and police?

Presumably the incident where the crazed lady stabbed the (unarmed) security guards could have been prevented by tazering her. Having practiced (simulated) knife combat, I'd certainly consider a long range weapon to be more effective than grappling.

If you are charged with protecting people from a crazy lady with a knife, would you turn down the tazer or gun? (If you believe it doesn't improve your odds of survival, you of course would.)

Given that many of these crazy people incidents happen away from security guards, it's hardly clear that "policing and security sets the tone". The US is just a highly violent place.

What sort of evidence are you looking for?

Mental illness is not a predictor of violent behaviour. You're falling for (probably) conjunction fallacy and confirmation bias. You find newspaper reports because those incidents are rare compared to all other murder; you use those newspaper reports (of rare events) to say "look how common it is".

(The SOMD link isn't loading for me) Note that all but one of your links involve drug abuse. Here the violence isn't due to mental illness, but to drug abuse. Drug & Alcohol addiction is a predictor of violent behaviour. (Much stronger than mental illness.)

Although I doubt you are correct, I didn't actually make any claims about mental illness. You seem to be arguing against something I didn't say.

This is a thread about mental illness, and you are using slurs associated with mental illness ("crazed"). If you're not talking about mental illness you probably need to be more careful with your lazy use of stigmatising language.

When many people keep misunderstanding what you say perhaps the problem is with your poor communication style, not their comprehension.

> Although I doubt you are correct

Your inability to provide a cite has been noted.

A quick google search suggests various mental illnesses (bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and the catch-all "serious mental illness" category) are strongly linked with violence.

http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/resources/consequence...

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/mental-illn...

The latter article also describes a study suggesting "matched controls" (read: siblings of mentally ill people) are also disproportionately violent which is interesting.

Many citations are provided therein. I didn't provide it because it's completely tangential to the main point, namely that there exist crazed and violent people who should be tazed and tied up. I'll note you didn't provide a citation either.

You risk assess the situation before you go in the room. You make sure every room has panic alarms, or that individuals have panic alarms. You make sure that the patient is never between you and the door. (All of this is standard practice).

You have two (or more) members of staff dealing with that person.

You de-escalate at every opportunity.

You have stuff like rapid tranquilisation and restraint available (although these are methods of last resort).

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