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Comment by stickyricky | Hacker News Reader

Over Thanksgiving I shot a gun for the first time. An AR15 and a Glock. The AR was fun to shoot. Kind of nerve-wracking holding a weapon that could kill someone but fun none the less.

The Glock was another story. It kicked like crazy and you could really feel the power of each shot in your arms. I didn't have any fun shooting it and I was a more than a little terrified I was going to hurt someone. Even when it was empty I had so much unease just setting it down on the table.

Seeing those police officers enter someones home with their guns drawn and pointed was... a new feeling. I had an immense sense of dread just knowing how much power was behind those guns. The thought that someone was pointing it at children is just beyond my comprehension now. For what? Allegedly logging into a website?

If shes guilty, go to jail, pay the fine, whatever. But the level of escalation to even walk through the front door with your gun drawn. The level of... I don't know... disrespect? Hatred? I can't even begin to describe to someone who doesn't know just how much force and how casually its being shown.

Truly, these officers are a disgrace to Florida. The people who trained them are a disgrace. And the people who empower them to behave this way are a disgrace.

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I had an identical first-time experience a few months ago. For some reason I was expecting the Glock to be way easier and less terrifying than the AR, but it wasn't. It really blew my mind that I could aim directly at a human-sized target only 6 feet away and totally miss.

Isn't the first thing they tell you about guns something like "don't point it at anything you don't intend to destroy"? How does a trained officer hear that two children are in the house and not immediately de-escalate? This is insanity.

> How does a trained officer hear that two children are in the house and not immediately de-escalate?

Unfortunately the police shoot kids fairly routinely, as lawyer Greg Doucette shows in this twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1336132653481865217

After reading through the linked thread I'm taken aback by the sheer number of deaths that don't seem to get any kind of coverage in the national press (and that's only for people accidentally shot as the police were trying to kill their pet).

Considering the sheer number of killings, this can and really should be reported in much a similar way to a protracted war, as it does look very much to be an extended attack upon civilians by an armed forces of sorts.

Some cops receive training that teaches them to escalate.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/warrior-cop-clas...

bigyikes says >"It really blew my mind that I could aim directly at a human-sized target only 6 feet away and totally miss."<

No surprise. Even after years of training many, if not most, police officers miss close-up shots more often than they hit. There's a surveillance video somewhere of a security guard and a perp shooting their firearms at each other from about 3 feet apart: they miss every shot. One had a revolver and the other a semi-automatic. It is somewhat reminiscent of the "apartment scene" in Pulp Fiction but even wilder and less believable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6YBKdmOlM8

Shooting a target at a range is very different from drawing and shooting at real people who are moving toward/away from you, possibly with ill intent and possibly armed.

For police, entering a building with a search warrant is not something to be done with a firearm holstered. You have no idea what you're up against in that situation.

> For police, entering a building with a search warrant is not something to be done with a firearm holstered. You have no idea what you're up against in that situation.

This is a ridiculous rationalization that could be applied to literally anyone or anything.

What's interesting here is how much your experience is a bit counter to the actual power and destructive energy released by the two. You aren't WRONG -- the pistol is way harder to shoot. But that hides a big delta.

Essentially zero handguns produce the kind of energy downrange that an AR-15 produces.

You feel more recoil with a pistol, sure, but that's misleading in the extreme.

Because I am a giant nerd (I mean, look where I'm posting) I have a folder full of Excel docs I created to collate information to compare it for my own amusement. One of those is about ballistics.

An AR is almost always chambered in 5.56x45mm, a NATO standard caliber. The actual projectile in a 5.56 round is super super small -- like, 62 grams. But there's a LOT of powder behind it, so it delivers on the order of 1800 J.

Glocks are most often in 9mm, which is the most popular handgun round in the world. The actual bullet for 9mm is about TWICE as massive, but has so much less powder, and so much less barrel to spin up, that its downrange energy is typically less than 500J -- ie, like 28% of the AR.

But the Glock will buck in your hand, for sure. It takes training and practice to be able to hit the target reliably over and over.

An AR, though, is insanely stable for lots of reasons -- obviously, it's heavier than the pistol, but that's not all of it. There's some clever design involved. But the end result is a gun that most any trainable person can learn to shoot accurately very, very quickly. The marriage of 5.56 and the AR platform creates a weapon that's really insanely good at rapid, accurate fire.

This made it very successful as a military rifle, and makes it a serious terror in the hands of someone bent on bad acts.

For physics nerds: momentum is mv, kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2. Upon firing, the chemical energy of the powder is converted to kinetic energy in the bullet. When the bullet hits the target kinetic energy is converted to tissue damage. More powder = more kinetic energy = more damage. Heavier bullet = more momentum = more recoil. That's why the Glock has so much more kick, while the AR-15 has more penetrating power and range. There are also pretty massive differences in the aerodynamics of the bullet, which probably helps the AR-15's range a lot:

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ab7ec2e9df26a1afc26803...

> Heavier bullet = more momentum = more recoil.

But if you have the same amount of powder (chemical energy) a heavier bullet will simply move slower, resulting in the same momentum and recoil.

What makes the AR-15 easier to handle is that the gun itself is heavier, so it moves slower from the recoil. That and a few other things like dissipating the energy over a large area on your shoulder instead of the palm of your hand.

My understanding is that there's also some clever gunsmithing involved to help reduce felt recoil there as well, but I'm not an authority in any way.

62 grams is a big hunk of metal, you probably mistyped "grains"? 62 grains is just ~4 grams.

You are correct. I have both columns in my spreadsheet and misread.

5.56 is about 4 grams, or 62 gr.

9mm is about twice that: 7.5 grams or 115 gr.

I mean, you're talking about how you went shooting deadly firearms for fun on a family holiday, and then express disbelief that police would enter a suspects house with firearms drawn.

I'm not american but it seems pretty obvious to me why american police are trigger happy while in most other countries they are far less so.

> I'm not american but it seems pretty obvious to me why american police are trigger happy while in most other countries they are far less so.

Can not be access to guns, I live in Switzerland and 'we' shoot a lot. Have a lot of firearms at home too. Yet our cops are all but trigger happy. So the reason must be another that what I think you are implying?

It seems pretty obvious to me that the police act partly according to how they were trained, and partly according to the esprit de corps and culture that has developed over time.

I agree with you and think it’s an extreme oversimplification to say that higher rate of gun ownership would lead to a more violent police force. Like the military, they are a tool that will behave and act according to the implicit and explicit expectations placed upon them from different sides.

> t seems pretty obvious to me that the police act partly according to how they were trained,

Not doing so is grounds for dismissal in a lot of precincts. It's why we hear stories of officers doing the ostensibly "right" thing by not killing a suspect, yet face dismissal. The department training guidelines dictate a use of deadly force in a scenario, and not doing so is seen as risking the lives of officers.

This is the hill American need to climb to reduce the likelihood of death and serious injury by police. There is a lot of judicial precedent supporting such policies as part of policing guidelines, so it is very unlikely the change will come from the courts. Instead, citizens will need to work at a local level to shift training and policy towards de-escalation.

Speaking of training and the military, the best trained personnel (Special Forces) are the ones least likely to pull the trigger. They are trained to hold back until they cannot anymore, and they are confident in their abilities. Very different from regular police. Even though the SF personnel are faced with situations far more dangerous.

Which makes complete sense - they have more training and experience and thus are more confident in their own ability to keep cool in a difficult situation and make split-second decisions, rather than what seems like low-level cops being scared to death and reactionary in their encounters. Whatever the reason for this pattern of behaviour, it's a disgusting outcome.

I don’t live in the US or Switzerland, but my guess is that in Switzerland, there is almost zero chance, statistically, for the police officer to be shot by suspect. In my country, I haven’t ever heard about police officer being shot, and coincidentally, I’ve never heard about a suspect being shot by the police unless it’s some kind of counter terrorist operation or something.

The behavior of American police behavior cannot be explained by the number that have been shot. That number has been trending downwards over the last few decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_police_office...

Regardless, the current actions in question were inexcusable even if police incorrectly believe they are in increasing danger in general. They simply had no reason to be brandishing firearms in this specific case.

It’s not about the number of officers being shot per se. I’m not trying to defend the US police. But I think it’s about the danger of the encounter. In my country, police don’t encounter suspects who are a) under the drug influence, b) very likely to be carrying a weapon and c) very likely to use that weapon. So here they are trained accordingly and police don’t shoot at suspects. In the US, it’s very different. My friend was once robbed by armed criminals in Los Angeles, which would be unthinkable where I live. So I guess the police in the US is trained to respond to such encounters because they have to. And the downward trend might be due various reasons, including aforementioned training that prevents police officer from being shot in the first place. It’s all just my guess, of course.

You're saying a lot here so it's a bit tough to respond specifically. But my point is the following: the danger police has decreased hence any talk of increased danger is certainly wrong. There may be a _perceived_ increase in danger, but that's not the same thing.

It seems pretty clear (to me) to be cultural. Not cultural in some static sense (e.g. American vs Swiss), but cultural as in the culture of policing in the US has been changing over time. Our police has treated American citizens as more dangerous while the opposite is true. The real question is why. Why have Americans idea of the level of crime in society so diverged from reality? Can this be reversed?

Perhaps it's all about training and the culture of "killology" that's seeping into our police forces [1].

Or maybe it's the fact that corporations pay police to "protect and serve" them instead of the general public [2].

Or it's the "perceived" danger from the cops' point of view?

[1] https://www.insider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-tra...

[2] https://readsludge.com/2020/06/19/corporate-backers-of-the-b...

> "In my country" > "In the US, it's very different"

If I had a dollar for every time someone on HN who doesn't live in the US nonetheless weighs in as an expert on American life I could retire.

Do you think a data scientist who had ethical concerns about covid data manipulation is a violent murderer? Do you think America in real life is like a movie with gun fights and explosions?

There is essentially zero risk of someone shooting a cop in a routine situation. They weren't raiding some druglord gang headquarters or ISIS terrorist operation.

Again, in my country criminals don’t carry guns and unlikely to be under drug influence = zero police shootings. Vs your country, where criminals do carry guns = lots of police shootings. No need to be American to connect the dots.

Honestly, being a cop is probably no more 'dangerous' than walking into any business establishment and getting blown away by an insane person.

I used to deliver pizza's back in the 90s, I never would've thought my job was top 5 for deaths, and cops were > 18th, but those are the statistics.

Switzerland has very different regulations, practices, and policies related to guns than America. Although gun ownership in Switzerland is high for a developed country it is still a fraction of what it is in America.

Switzerland and America are like chalk and cheese when it comes to gun ownership.

It is mostly lack of/improper training combined with fear.

Switzerland is a much smaller and safer country than the USA, people Europe would come up with much better comparisons if they compared the USA to the whole of Europe rather than their particular niche.

Having guns is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

You need to have guns and a mixture of distrust and/or fear of the government.

That does not mean you should be pointing a gun at some one unless you intend to kill them.

it seems the parent post is about a first time ever hands on experience with firearms, and realization its not like TV.

The trigger happiness of cops is unrelated to our rate of firearm ownership. In fact the percentage of American homes that own any firearm has been on the decline for decades, while cops have gotten much more aggressive and militarized.

There's a difference between target shooting and threatening someone with a gun, just like there's a difference between pentesting an OWASP training VM and actively deploying ransomeware at a hospital.

I'm glad you find it easy to characterize 330 million people as the same person. That's in no way fair or realistic. It's like saying all Europeans are the same.

this is why Absolutly NO ONE should be immune from the consequences of thier actions, and in a situation of authoritative power should be even more accountable than others, not less accountable

Unfortunately this is not the case in the US thanks to qualified immunity...

Two out of the three times in my life that I've had a gun pointed at me, it was the cops!

Having had a gun pointed to you at all three times in your life is an absolutely terrifying statistic to me.

Incredibly common here.

I was a teenage passenger in a car when a friend of mine held up his wallet in the light of the back window to see if he had his bank card or w/e. Cop car was behind us in traffic, pulls us over, and two cops get out guns drawn instructing everyone to get face down on the pavement.

Turns out they thought they saw a knife/gun when my friend had held us wallet up in the light, and they figured we were brandishing a weapon at them. We all got searched and when they found half of us Boy Scouts were carrying pocket knives things got really stupid really fast. We had to beg them to be rational with us, nose down on the pavement. Seriously I think the only thing that saved us was two of us had our Eagle cards...

This is anecdotal in rural small-town Iowa... but having lived this sorta stuff first-hand you realize that it's not uncommon to have been harassed at gunpoint by the police.

The way you wrote your comment seems to imply you prefer criminals to point a gun at you

Yea - criminals typically have more repercussions to their actions where-as a cop has lots of protection behind them. Usually the worst-case scenario for a cop pulling the trigger is a boring early retirement with one heck of a pension.

I'd rather be mugged at gunpoint vs. held at gunpoint by a cop any day of the week due to game theory alone.

If that is your preference, I think you are living in the wrong country.

The only times I've ever had guns pointed at me were by the cops.

The AR15 is shooting a much more potent round than the glock. It just is more fun to shoot because it is about 5-6x as heavy as the glock and your shoulder is a much stouter backrest than your wrists.

I think the word you are looking for is indifference

Ms Jones own take "They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the gestapo." doesn't seem far off.

How about we let the facts come out in a court of law before calling someone you’ve never met a “disgrace”?

Are you under the impression that unless something is both illegal, and produced enough evidence to be convicted in court, it cannot be disgraceful? There's no possibility of a world where the police do disgraceful things legally, let alone disgraceful illegal things and get away with it?

No. You read an awful lot into that.

Then please, enlighten me as to what exactly is stopping anyone from calling these people disgraceful until it ends up in court, particularly considering the fact that the video isn't especially ambiguous as to what happened. In fact, how is "a court of law" at all relevant to the matter of their being disgraceful?

There's an important detail missing from your abbreviated account and that is the individual refused to open the door for the warrant and apparently used the time to 'alter' her situation.

So it's not as if the police just came in like a swat team off the bat.

America is a dangerous place, and just like you're a 'regular person at the range with an AR and a Glock' - guns are everywhere.

The 'normal' situation for police to be serving a warrant would be against people accused of things more physically nefarious, and it's probably very ingrained SOP to have weapons drawn if the individual wouldn't open the door and some degree of aggression needed to be used to enter the premises to serve the warrant.

That they had their 'guns out of holsters' is actually perfectly reasonable because systematically, it's too dangerous for them otherwise.

That said - this was a warrant for a white collar/non-violent crime and there's just no excuse for pointing guns at kids, or even the former employee frankly.

Point being, we can't cherry-pick just the things that don't sound nice, and entirely decontextualise.

If there weren't 500 million guns, many of them high-powered floating around out there - and Americans didn't have a propensity for shooting at cops (the level of assertion people show when being arrested in the US is way more than in other nations, car chases barely ever happen in my home country) - then the SOP (standard operating procedures) would be very different. Cops are chill where I'm from - t least in part - because they just don't face aggression or violence in a way that is really threatening. Fights, yes, guns in their faces, almost unheard of.

Given the possibly political nature of the arrest, I think it probably needs to be reviewed by the local Justice Department as well because 'gun pointing aside' - the other Elephant in the room is the issue of whistleblower harassment etc..

>There's an important detail missing from your abbreviated account and that is the individual refused to open the door for the warrant and apparently used the time to 'alter' her situation.

Proof? This sounds an awful lot like something a police department who refused to publish video evidence themselves would make up out of thin air to save face.

Why would the police want to release anything?

The press clearly misrepresented even the minor facts of the case ('pointed guns at children') for which there isn't any evidence - using that likely untruth as the headline item thereby making it an iron clad fact of 'truth' in the public narrative.

It's possible, even likely that 1) The woman did something actually wrong and used government accounts without permission and 2) she didn't answer the door for 20 minutes, thereby requiring the police to take a more assertive posture. And frankly I doubt they pointed guns at children because that would be pointless. (Although it's possible she is entirely innocent of breaking into said systems, and possibly has some entirely good reason why she didn't answer the door for the police for 20 minutes)

If you use some public system in an unauthorized way, download data, you certainly would expect police to knock in the door, and you don't answer it for 20 minutes, they might have their guns upholstered when you finally do. That's not unreasonable.

Also, just because someone has a grievance with your company/government, doesn't them a whistleblower. In the entirety of her public foray, I'm not able to find the specific nature of her concerns - the more I look, the more I doubt her claims. Florida releases more data than any province here in Canada as I can tell, here is the Florida dashboard [1] here is the Ontario dashboard [2].

Florida release information specifically related to schools, LTC facilities etc. - Quebec has for example denied that data to the public.

I feel the entire case, like everything, has been politicized.

For reference From [3]: "Plessinger said Jones refused to answer the door for 20 minutes and hung up on agents. Jones eventually let the agents into the home, she said.

Her family was upstairs when agents entered, Plessinger said.

The 31-second video Jones posted on Twitter shows agents entering her home with their guns drawn. Jones tells the officers that her husband and two children are upstairs as they direct her outside of the house.

One of the agents points his gun toward the stairwell. An officer shouts, “Police, come down now.”

As the video ends, Jones yells, “He just pointed a gun at my children.” The video does not show any children, or agents pointing guns at any children. FDLE said agents didn’t point guns at anyone."

[1] https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/

[2] https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/data-and-analysis/infe...

[3] https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-whistleblower...

This FL resident supports your efforts to inform. Trying to counter the downvotes but in the immortal words of Gureni Telsij: “there’s... too many of them!”

> America is a dangerous place, and just like you're a 'regular person at the range with an AR and a Glock' - guns are everywhere.

You are more likely to be violently attacked working at a convenience store than being a cop. But we would not tolerate it if the guy next to the slim jims pointed a gun at every random customer. Citizens that choose to carry a weapon for self-defense cannot point their weapon a people just in case, or even put their hand on their weapon or flash it to other people, that is called brandishing and is a crime. Yet police do it as a normal part of their interactions. This idea that police should be allowed threaten and intimidate other citizens as a normal part of their job because “its so dangerous” is ridiculous.

> it's probably very ingrained SOP to have weapons drawn

Then this is a failure of their training or a failure of the individual police. Hand waving police having deadly weapons drawn and pointed at fellow citizens because of habit is not acceptable.

> That they had their 'guns out of holsters' is actually perfectly reasonable because systematically, it's too dangerous for them otherwise.

First, it is not too dangerous. Second, if it is, then pick a new line of work. If you are too scared to do your job correctly and would rather put citizens at increased risk then join the post office. And maybe, just maybe, a policy of shoving guns in people’s faces is what escalates many of these situations.

"You are more likely to be violently attacked working at a convenience store than being a cop."

You are absolutely more likely to be shot at while serving a warrant, than working in a convenience store.

"Citizens that choose to carry a weapon for self-defense cannot point their weapon a people just in case"

Citizens are not police officers, entrusted to carry out the law and who must actively confront danger, moreover, police are trained to do so.

"Then this is a failure of their training or a failure of the individual police."

This is wrong to the extent that it's very rational for police to at least have weapons drawn when individuals are refusing to comply with the warrant etc.. 'Weapons drawn' is a very simple tactic, which makes them easy to use if necessary. It is not in and of itself particularly dangerous.

"First, it is not too dangerous. "

Yes it is. [1] (from the AP, not Fox News) Have a little Google yourself.

" Second, if it is, then pick a new line of work"

This is a shameful remark, exemplary of the general tone here. "If you don't want to get COVID and die - quit being a nurse - now go ahead and work without a mask!". It's absurd (and basically offensive) to suggest that public servants shouldn't have the right to take appropriate steps to defend themselves, or even have to put themselves in a position of danger, let alone harassment in the first place.

Even African American Police officers are called the n-word and put up with all sorts of horrible abuses (just search 'police' on TikTok) which should definitely be illegal: you cannot go into the DMV or IRS (or Wallmart!) and start harassing people - the same should apply to police.

If the woman in question was concerned for the safety of her children, she would have simply opened the door and 'used her words'.

If in fact, the Gov. is illegally intimidating her, and she's done no wrong, well then I hope the judge recognizes that.

Finally, police reform is not going to come form the plebes on social media, it's going to have to be done thoughtfully, by them, led probably by ex-police officers who have first-hand experience.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/30fd23e66f21446b90d2b8cb0135ae03

> "You are more likely to be violently attacked working at a convenience store than being a cop."

> You are absolutely more likely to be shot at while serving a warrant, than working in a convenience store.

Do either of you have statistics?

> Yes it is. [1] (from the AP, not Fox News) Have a little Google yourself.

Serving a search warrant on a statistician who blew the whistle on corruption is nowhere near the same situation as serving a search warrant on drug dealers. Come the fuck on.

1) The article clearly makes a distinction between the types of warrants.

Serving warrants in general dangerous, point blank - and even 'white collar criminals' who don't answer the door are giving indication that something may be up.

It's 100% reasonable for the police to have their weapons upholstered at that point and well within reasonable SOP.

2) There's no evidence of corruption on behalf of the officials in Florida - this is the continued misrepresentation of some in the press, and easy echo-chamber populism.

There as an argument over how data should be represented; disagreeing with your employer is not 'whistleblowing'.

Again - Florida releases considerably more detailed information than they do in any province in Canada and somehow, everyone seems to think that we are doing 'such a great job in governance'.

The overall level of wilful ignorance on these nuanced incidents in shameful. Even so-called smart people believe what their emotional triggers and biases want them to believe.

I'm looking forward to hearing what the courts have to say about it.

I think this story might be the case study I use to open a discussion about news bias with my 66 year old father. We live in FL and I had a brief discussion with him sometime during the summer about our state's pandemic response. He mentioned something about the governor trying to hide data, and I was like “...huh?” and after hearing this story today I connected the dots.

> You are absolutely more likely to be shot at while serving a warrant, than working in a convenience store.

Over 600 convenience store workers are murdered on the job per year [1] compared to about 60 per year for police [2], about 5-7 of which are during serving warrants (additionally backed by your own source). Convenience store workers are murdered at about 7 per 100k, while police are about 7-8 per 100k [3]. As for how dangerous it is, there are more than 60,000 “no knock raid” search warrants per year in the US [4] and there is no way of knowing how many 10s of thousands of regular warrants are served as well. Saying that serving warrants is “inherently dangerous” because people could become violent is like saying working at a convenience store is inherently dangerous because any customer could be a violent robber.

> This is a shameful remark, exemplary of the general tone here. "If you don't want to get COVID and die - quit being a nurse - now go ahead and work without a mask!". It's absurd (and basically offensive) to suggest that public servants shouldn't have the right to take appropriate steps to defend themselves, or even have to put themselves in a position of danger, let alone harassment in the first place.

Well, wearing a mask doesn’t put others at greater risk. If police want to wear body armor, great. If police want to put other people in danger by excessive weapons use, then no that is not ok. Everyone is allowed to defend themselves against an attacker. Police want to defend themselves anyone that could be an attacker, which is not ok. I am all for providing safety equipment and training to all jobs. I am not ok with compromising the safety of others for the safety, perceived or otherwise, of the police.

This twisting of the concept of defending yourself is exactly the problem. Police already carry guns, multiple less lethal weapons, body armor, etc. If they are attacked, they have multiple ways of stopping the threat, including deadly force. No one has made any claim otherwise. But police want to be able to brandish their weapons and point their weapons at other people that have not shown themselves to be a threat, because there is the possibility of a threat and the misguided idea that imagined threats justify real threats by the police against other citizens.

My tone is one of outrage that police brandishing or even drawing their weapons against unarmed fellow citizens is just seen as normal and acceptable. That police being allowed to see every person as a potential threat and to treat them that way is the standard. Having your hand on your weapon is a threat. Having a weapon drawn is a threat. Pointing your weapon at someone else is a threat. Police threatening unarmed people is not acceptable.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/assaults-and-violent-acts-i...

[2] https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...

[3] https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-2018.htm

[4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-war-on-drugs-gave-...

This seems like a pretty thoughtful comment... downvoted to oblivion. Stay classy HN

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