Police in the US shoot dogs so often, an expert calls it an “epidemic” (2016)

That said, the training could be much better than it is. But people like low taxes.

But you seem to be holding them accountable not for their actions, but their words later.

There is entirely too much focus on peoples thoughts rather than their track record of actions.

Gary Potter, "The History of Policing in the US"[1]:

"In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992)."

"More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to “disorder.” What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to “disorder.” These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the “collective good” (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state."

Neil Postman, "Technopoly":

“Adolf Eichmann becomes the basic model and metaphor for a bureaucrat in the age of Technopoly. When faced with the charge of crimes against humanity, he argued that he had no part in the formulation of Nazi political or sociological theory; he dealt only with the technical problems of moving vast numbers of people from one place to another. Why they were being moved and, especially, what would happen to them when they arrived at their destination were not relevant to his job. Although the jobs of bureaucrats in today's Technopoly have results far less horrific, Eichmann's answer is probably given five thousand times a day in America alone: I have no responsibility for the human consequences of my decisions. I am only responsible for the efficiency of my part of the bureaucracy, which must be maintained at all costs.”

[1]:https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-...

It could be that, in many of those incidents, lethal force prevented the deaths of other people. But I don't have numbers to say one way or another.

I am expected to uncritically believe the owners, to believe that all these dogs are harmless and well trained and that they're all being shot for no reason. Well I believe that some of them are being shot for no good reason, but I've seen very little to suggest that most are. And from my interactions with the general public, I am inclined to believe most dogs are, if not dangerous, then at least poorly trained.

40 years in California, I'd only ever been assaulted by dogs a handful of times and that's because they weren't controlled. Dogs are generally allowed to run freely in their own yards/homes so it makes sense that strangers/police entering yards and homes in a stressful situation, encounter aggressive animals much more frequently.

I walked out.

I don’t need to eat my food at a place that allows dog ass on its tables.

I was tempted to take photo and report to the Dept of Health but did not.

> Federal money for gun research all but disappeared after Congress in 1996 enacted the so-called Dickey Amendment, which barred the C.D.C. from spending money to “advocate or promote gun control.” It was named for Jay Dickey, a former Republican House member from Arkansas, who proudly proclaimed himself the National Rifle Association’s “point man” in Washington.

> [...]

> In 2019, Dr. Rosenberg and Mr. Dickey’s former wife, Betty, a retired former prosecutor and chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, helped persuade Congress to restore the funding; lawmakers appropriated $25 million, split between the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, for firearm injury prevention research.

Congress stymied funding for 25 years, but it has since been restored.

It's trivial to find videos of dog attacks that contradict your absolutist assertion.

Also, I think it says something about the temperament and worldview of the owners of these dogs that they so often seem very concerned with appearing brave or cowardly.

It doesn't matter that they are lovable creatures that never showed any signals of violence, then can change in seconds if them deem the situation bad enough (and what is a bad situation for a dog is really not intuitive for humans).