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Comment by GenerocUsername | Hacker News Reader

Buy a gun. 2A. Prepare for a world in which you have to defend yourself because help is not coming and the bad actors know it.

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Average police response time is 10 minutes. Violent criminals don't wait that long.

Edit: To be clear, this isn't a good reason to go out and buy a gun. We already know that the help isn't coming, which is why the police should focus on real crimes.

All that will do is make the pile of bodies higher. The solutions are attainable and don’t involve violence.

Are the solutions attainable? AFAICT most of the violence is coming from the police, and they are emboldened by the complete lack of consequences for use of force.

I think you could argue that the cause of violence is the massive imbalance in power between the people involved. Ideally the risk of actual consequence might dissuade police from acting thoughtlessly.

Edit: specifically referring to the violence at protests, not broader violence issues. It’s worth remembering that Americans have a first amendment right to protest peacefully.

Are police really responsible for most violence (murders / robberies etc) in the US. If so it would seem better supervision would lead to a huge reduction in those crimes.

If you believe the news headlines without thinking about how they're feeding you a carefully-constructed narrative, then yes. The stat everyone likes to quote is that cops commit some ludicrously large proportion of all murders by strangers, but of course people don't generally go around killing people they don't know. Beating, mugging, burglarizing at gunpoint? Sure, there's plenty of that... but murders are generally someone known to the victim.

Civilian on civilian violence is many multiples higher than police on civilian violence.

Look at what happens anywhere there is a police vacuum. Be it Somalia, Mexico, Paris Suburbs, South African townships.

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