The sanctity of saving innocent lives from state abuses is a hard fought lesson of history that we should not take lightly. Any time the state abuses this there should be serious consequences. Not a civil lawsuit paid out by taxpayer money.
That's a bit extreme.
First, because illegitimate aggression isn't just accepted by quite a lot of people, there is vocal debate and public outcry over it. Which is good.
Second, confirmation bias may be amplifying your fears here. According to the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/...), there were about 1100 people killed by police in 2016, and almost 1200 in 2015. And some portion of those were likely justifiable (and maybe even saved lives).
To get killed by police is not quite as unlucky as getting struck by lightning, but the odds are about 1/295,000 for the former.
It's hard to overstate how completely alone the United States stands when the stats are compacted: [0]
Australia had 94 fatal police shootings between 1992 and 2011. The U.S. had 97 in March of 2015.
England and Wales had 55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years. The U.S. had 59 in the first 24 days of 2015.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-...
Illegitimate violence from the state (the police) is actually common enough that I have seen it many times in my life; and I am a White, law-abiding person who makes a point to stay out of trouble.
I feel extremely safe and have always had friendly encounters with police in both Europe and East Asia.
Note the official stats don't include scenarios such as the ones around Gary Webb or Ian Murdock. We won't ever know what really happened, but they're extremely suspicious.
How we calibrate our personal fears and existential anxieties in light of all these bad things, is a different matter.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/31/terrorists-vs-chairs-an...
The context of a World War - even more so than that of any other war - makes it much easier for any government to do what it likes. Which most often means to kill lots and lots of people.
What I argue is that such context is very different from a time of peace. It's not really fair to include WW2 atrocities when talking about the number of deaths caused by guns in a peace-time.
The GP tried to do exactly that, which I disagree with in itself, and moreover forgot to include any other "government [that] murdered millions of unarmed civilians" in their argument. I don't have a strong opinion on whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a good or bad idea, I just pointed out that, in that single operation, the US government effectively "murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians". Again, that's nothing surprising, nuclear weapons are designed to do just that.
So, again, it was war. People die in wars. That's what the wars are for, basically. Now, since then, we're at peace (here in Europe, at least). The number (and rate) of deaths caused by guns during this peaceful time is overwhelmingly higher in the US than in Germany. That's it, I don't mean anything else, just that this is a fact and that mentioning Auschwitz is not a valid counter-argument for this.
Germany also had economic warfare waged against them and this should not even be controversial--even mainstream "modern-day priests" like the hugely influential economist Keynes had said this.
That said the Japanese empire was an evil one, like most empires, but when the bombs were dropped on civilians the war was already over--that is why Eisenhower said "there was no reason to use those things."
Police violence is an issue but way overblown for most people -- violence from other citizens far outweighs the police risk.
Compare to third world countries where you can easily be murdered in broad daylight surrounded by people, over a few hundred bucks, and the murderers face very little chance of being caught, let alone convicted.
Of course the best solution is to move to a country with great demographics equalling no crime or police violence, but those are becoming hard to find.
1: Turns out if you report (online with no followup) one of your licence plates as having fallen off your $300 car, cops might do a "felony takedown" on you, your 100 lbs wife, and 1 year old daughter. This apparently includes aiming handguns at your head while giving instructions like "lift your shirt up from the top".
Wait, what? That's the kind of statement that just begs for a followup. Did they say what they thought was going on to justify that response?
I got new plates soon after that, I never found out what happened to mine.
But if so you would think the criminals would learn to swap plates instead, as who looks at their plates that closely?
Canada, The UK, Australia, New Zealand - those are the english speaking ones that meet your criteria. After that, most countries in the EU, Nordic countries, most countries in Asia would also be considered to have less crime and police violence than the US, while having comparable or superior social services and demographics (most but not all, countries in Asia - Duterte isn't making any friends recently).