Hacker News Reader

Comment by solidsnack9000 | Hacker News Reader

Many gun control advocates see removing guns from private hands as a first step towards disarming the police. This is often couched in terms of a comparison with British policing: the argument is that British police are not as afraid, so don't engage in excessive force as often, because there aren't guns around that could be used to kill them.

However, most American police and sheriff's departments tend to support gun ownership. Maybe because they are as aware as anyone of the saying: "When seconds count, police are only minutes away.".

View on HN

"the argument is that British police are not as afraid, so don't engage in excessive force as often, because there aren't guns around that could be used to kill them"

From what I've read, this has been changing in recent years, with British police getting more and more armed, apparently in response to terrorists and organized crime being better armed.

So the US and British police are converging, but perhaps not in the way that gun control advocates might have hoped.

A regular officer in the UK still doesn’t carry a firearm. There ARE plenty of Firearms Officers around but they receive significantly more training than a typical US officer and are usually only there to respond to armed crime, or at major airports etc.

The Police Federation, the association for low and medium rank police, regularly sounds out officers' view of their being armed. The public is keener on armed police than the police are - thanks to idiot perspectives from the likes of the Daily Mail. Police themselves are always overwhelmingly against - like usually 80 or 90% against when polled. They get tasers - though even those don't seem universal - even that was considered a step too far by many.

Firearms officers will remain - thankfully - volunteers subject to significant extra training, psychological screening and oversight. When mistakes or negligence happen they make front page news. There are more firearms units and more in visible positions like airports and other protection than there used to be, but they remain a small minority of the overall.

When mistakes or negligence happen, they make front page news in the United States, too.

OK, then I should have expressed it better - it's vanishingly rare. Even armed officers are expected to de-escalate when possible, rather than shoot. There's been some questionable sounding incidents amongst the very low numbers of actual shootings, and of course there are sometimes major cock-ups - a couple of which that sounded seriously negligent.

Wikipedia says in the year 2011–12, conventional firearms were used FIVE times. At the time there were 6,756 Authorised Firearms Officers and 12,550 police operations in which firearms were authorised throughout England and Wales. Which doesn't sound like UK:US convergence to me. :)

I agree with your point to the effect that US and UK are not converging in this area.

What are differences in UK training? I imagine the training is very good because the confidence not to over-react in self-defense comes from knowing (a) that you can handle many situations and (b) how to assess the situation you when are in it.

They are not converging, not even close, please don’t spread misinformation.

In 12 months up to March 2018, there were 18,746 armed police operations in the UK. Weapons were fired on 12 occasions. In comparison, 1,147 people were shot dead by police in the US in 2017.

Since 1990, a total of 70 people were fatally shot in the UK.

12 occasions of guns used vs 1,147 people shot by the police during the same time frame. 70 people killed in 30 years vs 1,147 in 1 year.

So please, UK and US police are not converging, do not spread misinformation.

For correctness sake you should normalize your numbers for population, but your point of course still stands.

Using raw numbers without adjusting for population is spreading misinformation. America's population is ~5x greater.

Using numbers from 1990 is also meaningless for addressing the claim that gun use by UK police is increasing, as low numbers could just represent it being low in past.

So if all gun deaths in the UK since 1990 were also in the last month then the 2 systems are converging?

Just looking at the 2017 numbers, a 5x population difference cannot account for a nearly 100x difference between uses of armed force vs people being killed by the police.

> When seconds count, police are only minutes away

... to shoot you in your home.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-police-officer-sh...

But really, I never comprehend why police support civilians having guns since it just makes their job more dangerous.

Probably should talk with them. Take a couple of shooting classes in any state and you'll meet a lot of cops really quickly.

I've done that. I know the reasons they say, just stating that I can't comprehend why they value those reasons more than their personal daily job safety.

It would be a contradiction to choose a profession where you put yourself in harm's way to defend society's values of a just and free society and then try to pick away at justice or freedom in the name of personal safety. Oh, and: most cops know that the overwhelming majority of gun owners will never be a danger to them.

Yes, but what happens when the harmless owner's guns are stolen? Now they're a danger.

Because police leadership is elected, or appointed by someone who is, and their opinions tend to reflect the local politics.

The best way to protect against tyranny is an armed population

Yeah but I think I'll accept some low chance of tyranny for not getting shot in the face. Reckon I can handle dealing with the tyranny if it pops up, honest.

The founding fathers would disagree

I feel the exact opposite way - I'd rather risk the minuscule chance of being randomly shot than risk tyranny. Far, far more citizens were killed by their own governments each year in the 20th century (Some 2+ million) [1] than are killed by mass shootings (< 50) [2] or all guns [3] in the US every year. More people are killed with hands and fists, or with knives, or hammers than are killed with AR-15s, AK-47s or any other rifle in the United States every single year [3], yet we don't call for bans on those?

By the statistics, even if widespread gun ownership only has a 0.0001% chance of preventing tyranny every year then it seems worth it

Furthermore, how do you reckon you would deal with tyranny, if not with arms?

[1] https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM [2] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-... [3] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

In the uk we don’t have an armed population neither tyranny so are there alternatives?

> neither tyranny

We just ignore ("non-binding") referendums sometimes

British tyranny sounds pretty polite, I'm not sure shooting anyone over this would really be considered an improvement.

I mean someone did actually shoot and kill someone over just suggesting that people should vote in a certain way, and he's generally considered the bad guy in this interaction.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox

Ask the Irish how "polite" British tyranny sounds.

Not that I agree that an armed population is the BEST way to avoid tyranny, but saying A helps avoid B isn't contradicted by saying 'we don't have A or B so that can't be true'

Most democracies today don't have an armed population.

Which is quite ahistorical statement.

The gun control advocates currently don't have the numbers to disarm the population. That suggests that if they do get the numbers it will be in an alliance with the people who like centralised government power - ie, the sort of people who look at Hong Kong and think that it is a better state of affairs than open rebellion. Not an invalid view, and not as unpopular as people might expect - there is a big chunk of the population that trusts authority and values stability.

From that perspective, it is likely that any gun control legislation will increase the power difference between individuals and the state.

The thing is, they will never have the numbers to disarm the population, at least in the door-to-door sense. You'd have to be a moron to sign up for that job. All gun control is to increase the power difference between individuals and the state, because armed individuals are the final check on the state - the state's entire power derives from a monopoly on violence.

I'm hoping more people will do like you and draw conclusions to Hong Kong. When 50%+ of your populace has taken to the streets, and still can't achieve their goals it should be illuminating.

The Dayton Ohio shooter earlier this year was killed by police officers 32 seconds after he opened fire. He killed nine people in those 32 seconds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting

Dense crowds tend to end up with large casualty numbers like that, regardless of the method of attack.

This is often couched in terms of a comparison with British policing: the argument is that British police are not as afraid, so don't engage in excessive force as often, because there aren't guns around that could be used to kill them.

It's becoming more and more common to see British police with guns at events, central stations, etc (and not just handguns.. they carry MP5s). It's apparently to give the public confidence that terrorists won't attack but in reality it just makes me more scared of being shot by the police.

British training reaches some real high points. The SAS famously used MP-5s with flashlights on top and no sights — they were that well trained.

That is common view, but unfortunately it ignores the straightforward answer of just disarming everyday police right now. Things like routine traffic stops should not be performed by armed officers. Parking enforcement generally doesn't worry about whether the person they're writing a ticket to is armed - it takes two to escalate.

Routine traffic stops usually involve checking for warrants. That is one reason they are performed by armed officers.

Sure, but current procedure doesn't invalidate what I said. Checking for warrants doesn't necessitate a physical escalation if they're found. If the person wants to speed away, tack it onto their list of charges and perhaps call in a proper team.

Or simply stop checking for warrants altogether, so that every unlucky motorist isn't put into a situation that is primed to deal with a cornered animal.

There is a deeper philosophical point that if the reason someone is being stopped is a moving violation, then that is not a cause to address anything besides that specific violation. Sticking to that would also help reduce the occurrence of "broken taillight" pretexts.

As long as criminals are aware that a traffic stop might result in their warrants being found and their later arrest, they have every reason to shoot first and ask questions later.

This model of a criminal is overly simplistic - shooting only happens if it is required to get away. If, from the perspective of traffic enforcement, a motorist refuses to stop or just speeds away, then there is no cornered animal that needs to escape, and hence no gunfire.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com