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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

Gun ownership is very common in this country, and anyone on the other side of any door can have one.

So I can get that part.

Pointing a gun, loaded or not, at someone else should be a serious crime though! And there probably is, but cops can safely break most laws.

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While it is true that a lot of people own guns, there still needs to be a good reason to draw your weapon. Drawing a weapon is escalating the situation. Full stop. By drawing a weapon you indicate that you are willing to kill another person. There is a clear difference between having a weapon and positioning one's team in case weapons are drawn, but the police have a higher standard than the citizens. As a trained professional you have a higher expectation to remain cool and collected in a stressful situation (that's why you train. That's what you train for).

Guns should not be drawn unless there is a reasonable suspicion of a threat. What I tried to say in my OP is that there appears to be no indication of a reasonable suspicion of a threat.

As for gun ownership stats, I think many will be surprised with some of the data points: https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...

I imagine police officers are trained to have their guns drawn any time they enter a home where they cannot see the occupants.

There is not enough time to draw and shoot if the occupant runs out with his gun.

By the way, you are absolutely right about what it means to have a gun drawn: they are indicating that they are willing to kill. That's how they are trained.

> Gun ownership is very common in this country, and anyone on the other side of any door can have one. > So I can get that part.

Its completely unacceptable. Police don't pull over drivers for speeding with a gun drawn. However, anyone in Florida may be armed and you cannot reasonably argue that the drivers are cool headed.

This overreaction is unprofessional, dangerous, and thuggish.

We have a law that we may not be required to quarter soldiers, perhaps a better law would have been to make it illegal to enter private property without consent armed.

> We have a law that we may not be required to quarter soldiers, perhaps a better law would have been to make it illegal to enter private property without consent armed.

I believe that a warrant gives them this right. But the give a bit more nuance there is a difference in entering armed vs drawn. We should definitely have a high standard for when weapons are allowed to be drawn. It is in fact the police who are in a position of power, so they have the higher standard to meet.

With a pulled over car you can see the driver, and part of US driver's ed is to keep your hands visible to the officer.

When you break down a door, you can't know what's waiting on the other side.

There is the concept of the Castle Doctrine, where you are allowed to use deadly force (within reason) to defend yourself and your family when someone attempts to assault you within your own home. Not all states have it but regardless, it is null and void when it comes to the police.

EDIT: I'm not sure why this is being downvoted? We're discussing gun ownership in America, when it is legally allowable to use said firearms and the fact that none of that matters when it comes to Police entering your home, all in the context of police acting like the Gestapo at this woman's home.

For any normal citizen, pointing a gun at someone unprovoked is considered assault at best.

I think the law is a bit different when that someone shows up at your door or is inside your house. Isn't that the essence of the Breonna Jones case? I was reading of a different case recently too.

If they've announced that they're law enforcement, it's a bad idea though. You may be in the right if you're just armed and not pointing it, but being in the right never protects you.

The law actually isn't different.

Cops just have qualified immunity and have shown they throw hissy fit little tantrums if a DA holds them responsible for being the worthless sacks of shit that they are.

That they sometimes are.

Yeah, I bet if someone came over and beat the shit out of you for only an hour a day, you'd be correcting people that the person is only sometimes an asshole.

I agree that good cops do exist. Show me a cop that, for example, wants justice for Breonna Taylor, and I'll agree they're one of the good ones. But without being able to clear what is actually a very low bar for belief in American ideals and the rule of law, most of them are part of a criminal conspiracy.

Florida makes it very easy to own and conceal a handgun. I guess that leads to both politeness, and caution.

Ha! It leads to verbal confrontations escalating to murders instead of fistfights.

That's not the real relationship tree. Mass gun ownership leads to fear. Fear may lead to politeness and caution, but only because of the fear. It may also lead to a 'fight or flight' type response, and things might escalate quickly beyond where anyone wanted them to be...

If you want to structure society around fear, that is (I guess) a country's prerogative, but it's not something I (as a non-American) would ever support.

This hasn't been my experience fwiw as someone who moved from a non-gun country to the US. To be honest where I live (Montana) guns really aren't a problem. At least not the kind of problem that makes it a win to require Democrat candidates to support additional gun control measures. I think it's not unrealistic to imagine that we could completely dispense with the crazy Republicans if only democrats would drop gun control, it's such a wedge issue. Imagine that: Trump would never have happened, in exchange for not pursuing gun laws that probably wouldn't have achieved anything.

wasn't this story about the police being polite, and then later entering... cautiously?

Mass gun ownership also increases gun ownership among fools and incompetents who leave their guns in places where they can be stolen and introduced into the black market.

Or even where 4 year olds discharge the parents weapons into their 5 year old siblings - accidentally more or less. I’ve seen a few cases like that

NYC makes it very easy to own and cancel a handgun. I've never heard it of it's residents being polite.

I though NYC is a very difficult place to own and conceal a handgun (legally).

Oh, it’s impossible to do legally.

Which doesn’t stop NYC having many, many guns being concealed carry. Because of you are looking to commit violent crimes, what’s another felony vs. having the power of life and death over victims?

And if you are a likely target of violent crimes, what’s a concealed carry felony vs. being dead or having a family member assaulted or murdered because you couldn’t stop it?

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