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Comment by mrwh | Hacker News Reader

Checkout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... The USA is an outlier, by quite a margin, amongst rich countries. Of course there are differences in methodologies etc etc but nonetheless: USA is 34.8 per 10 million people. That puts it between Uruguay and Angola. Canada is 9.7. France, which has plenty of armed officers, is 3.8. The UK is 0.5. I come from the UK, it has plenty of violent people in it.

It's not enough to say this-is-just-how-it-is in the US, because the US is weird here. It's not normal for the security services to kill so many people in a rich country.

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>The UK is 0.5. I come from the UK, it has plenty of violent people in it.

Far, far more violent crime in the US. And there's essentially no guns in the UK.

Even still, rates have been falling in the US to my knowledge.

Edit: For perspective, I live in Chicago. There are usually 80-100+ shootings a weekend here. Since all US cops have guns that means cops just in 1 city could theoretically shoot 100 people a weekend and technically be justified. This really isn't the case in any other "rich" country as you put it.

Not that this doesn't mean there's not huge issues with policing and society, it just doesn't make sense to compare US to other countries.

This is an important point. But I also think this mindset that has been instilled in police that every encounter could be a dangerous gun ambush has caused a lot of unnecessary escalation and violence.

Policing isn't even a top 10 most dangerous job. Yes police offers are shot on duty. But the practices they use & their racist bias create confrontation and escalate encounters to violence.

'Warrior', 'killology' training has instilled quick to fire, ready to kill dehumanizing behavior and literally teaches Black neighborhoods are 'battlegrounds.'

Chicago is definitely a hard example combing the worst of our gun fetish, laws, and consequences of racism stealing opportunity and wealth from generations of Black and Brown communities. I'm sure it feels like a battleground for many that live there. No one could argue the situation there is under control or easy to control.

But there are a lot of other examples of bringing guns into peaceful encounters for instance traffic stops where they come up guns drawn as just an example with many recent tragedies created. Briana Taylor no-knock is an extreme example of policies that create deadly confrontation.

Yup.

Vast majority of policing jobs youre right are pretty mundane and not esp dangerous. Policing in high crime areas can at times be a different ballgame though and more stressful/dangerous than the average would suggest.

The US has probably one of the most disrespectful and outlandish fringe populations with higher crime overall than other rich countries. Compare the US to how people behave in Australia, Norway, Germany, etc... Have a feeling this will get down voted but you know its true.

As someone who actually likes and owns guns, I really think most (it's obviously complicated and multi-faceted) of this can be explained simply by saying "guns"

I mean... yes. That does seem to be it basically. Or not just guns (the Swiss have A LOT of guns) but guns + an attitude to them. The closest equivalent where I'm from in the UK (and I do live in the US now) is boy racers. Young men driving obnoxiously and thinking they have every right to drive obnoxiously. And they definitely do kill people, though as a side-effect, as it were. Seems like there's a similar attitude to guns in the US, but legally buttressed. My outsider's perspective anyway.

> Seems like there's a similar attitude to guns in the US, but legally buttressed.

There really isn’t. Almost no gun owners do anything unsafe with guns or ever shoot anyone. US gun culture is extremely safety focussed.

The media paints a completely bizarre and distorted picture of gun owners in general, picking the stupidest or most outlandish examples they can.

Most people who are involved in shootings in the US are in deeply underprivileged areas where there is a lot of crime in general, and ineffective policing and a dearth of opportunity.

It is often not irrational for young men in these circumstances to get involved in gang or crime related activities given the lack of alternatives, and it’s also not irrational to carry a gun under these circumstances, and it does lead to a lot of shootings.

This has very little to do with gun ownership and gun culture in the US in general.

I say this as someone who owns a good amount of guns, enjoys shooting, collecting, and has formal training in them.

Gun culture in the states, imo, needs iteration. The problem is that the people at the helm of gun culture are operating and advocating out of fear. The worst thing that ever happened to gun culture was people started lobbying to cancel 2a, which gave these people their power. It invited people who know nothing about guns, their uses, their purpose, or how to handle them into a world with real world consequences. It inspires buying frenzies and other ridiculous behavior. I'm not sure how many of these people actually kill people as opposed to the loopholes where bad actors purchase weapons they never should've had access to in order to bring violence and chaos into the world for their own gain.

Rather than talking down bad gun culture, I'd like to talk up good gun culture:

- know your weapon safety conditions. They're a community language for communicating safety and awareness. Knowing your weapon condition and confidently communicating something like, "condition 4" instills trust and confidence.

- know your weapons troubleshooting and function check procedures. The worst thing you can hear when you go to use a weapon is "clunk".

- know weapon safety rules. The military has some great ones that are quite universal. Treat, Never, Keep, Keep.

- weapons should be cared for and stored correctly. This is just an extension of good safety procedures.

Having good gun culture isn't just a thing to geek out about. It's a source of pride, much less a necessity.

In US, there is a culture of going out of your way to do something that would be inconsiderate to others. I think its perpetuated by movies, games, social media. Most other countries probably dont have that issue, though France seems like an outlier given how much they seem to try and make muslims miserable over there.

> France seems like an outlier given how much they seem to try and make muslims miserable over there.

Citation needed here.

Hijab ban and president's anti-Muslim rhetoric is well known.

It's not really something that can be cited and I'm probably going to get some shit for it, but having been in France for a good while if you're a Muslim it really does seem that way, at least compared to Canada or even the US.

And yet there's a net positive flow to France, how can this be explained? If it was really that bad you would expect to see the opposite.

French Muslims aren't any less French. Most of them are multiple generations removed from another country than France. Why would you expect them to move to the country of their grandparents and of whose language they often don't even speak?

Beyond that, most immigrants to France aren't Muslim either. Around a third come from the Maghreb, though not all of them are Muslim either. The reason why they go to France is because colonial era French institutions mean that they were taught French, and their countries are quite poor, so they go to the only country they have a solid shot of going to. Often they already have family in France.

But even then, only about 100 000 people from the Maghreb immigrate into France, which is slightly north of a tenth of a percent.

They can't really leave France either for mostly the same reason France is the main source of immigration.

Go watch La Haine

Doesn't Ireland have some of that?

That's interesting. One might also just say a lot of evidence points to the US being a "highly developed poor country" (or something) - a third world country for a significant part of its citizens.

But more broadly, the US should be compared to the broad range of countries in the world. Just comparing US indeed just makes the country look "weird". But looking India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, etc shed more light on the situation. Especially, as large country, the US contain a lot of development and underdevelopment (decay, corruption, etc).

Is put it more like: there are multiple United States, some well off, some poor and rural, some urban and rural.

Each comes with its own set of problems. Urban poor tends to be violent. Rural poor tends towards suicidal.

If you break it apart, we’ll off America doesn’t have a violent crime problem.

Yes -- but. Take the UK for example. The UK is the most unequal major country in Europe. It's a rich country which also contains some of the poorest regions in the continent. And yet, that doesn't translate to killings.

EDIT: to be clear, I am not disagreeing with you, but the same analysis could be applied to other countries, without the same conclusion. The US is not unusual in containing multitudes.

> The US is not unusual in containing multitudes.

The different regions are the size of countries though.

Instead of comparing it to any European country, comparing it to the EU might make more sense. You have Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, but you also have Bulgaria, Romania, Portugal and Croatia, each with their distinct culture and much more autonomy than a region in the UK, more like US states.

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