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Comment by goolz | Hacker News Reader

I am sure the militarization of police in the US has helped this a lot too. Honestly, aside from major metro areas (and even then) I see of no reason why cops need a Humvee with a mounted .50 cal turret.

My dad works in police training and talks a lot about how systemic the violence is within the culture of these departments (this observation was made by training all different departments at all different levels, over years).

And the best part is, they don’t want change and I suspect a lot of them actually enjoy this entrenched Us v. Them position. I probably would too if I had qualified immunity. And a Humvee.

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The only cops I meet these days are in the jiu jitsu gym, and they are usually very nice people. It’s interesting to just be playing a sport with someone but also realizing they are actually seriously training for the danger of getting into a life or death struggle with a 260lb guy who has some grappling skills. I can’t imagine having a job like that. My biggest threat in life is a complicated Jira ticket.

I would seriously consider entering a cage fight to the death with a 260lb guy if it meant I’d never have to use Jira again.

I'm with you. 2vs2?

High risk. Though if it works out for you it's a great upside. Though if you get beat your dieing moments may be seeing your Scrum master yell "Finish Him!" as your supporting developers scream for mercy.

Either way you'll probably end up a statue.

Either way, I never have to use Jira again!

Have you ever considered they're being fake?

You are aware of how systemic police gangs are right? Inherent to that is constant deception...

A big problem is all the cops who are not in the jiu jitsu gym. They may well end up shooting that 260lb guy because they didn't have the grappling skills to deal with him.

The issues with police are more systemic than personal. But, if you add personal issues to the mix, well...... we've seen the results many times.

> aside from major metro areas

Wtf? They don’t need that at all

What about the Nakatomi Plaza incident in 1988?

And the Bowling Green Massacre!

One New York cop sorted that as I recall. He didn’t even carry a gun initially.

Police don't get Humvees with 50 cal machine guns. They get them without guns. And they're useful for places that see inclement weather or floods or rural places with bad roads.

You say that now, but you'll be begging for militarized police when it's your kid at Parkland, or Uvalade, or wherever else it happens next.

Australia doesn't have militarised police and school shootings don't happen in the first place. Also: every other country than the US.

Yeah the UK had a shooting in Dunblane that shocked the country. Then, like Australia, something happened and somehow we didn’t have any more school shootings.

If only we could pinpoint that something. Like if there was a lesson that could be learned from both of those cases, something the USA could take and apply to see a similar decline in such mass shootings …

You guys now have things like “mass stabbings” and truck attacks. I don’t know how the numbers were effected, but the underlying issues still seem to exist. After all, it is not the guns that convince people to commit mass murders.

I don’t think you want to do a US vs UK comparison on violent crime. Hell the American police alone committed more homicides than there were in the UK last year.

I know US is much worse in violent crime, but you can’t fix problems by addressing its symptoms while overlooking their main cause. If UK is still running campaigns like “safe a life, bin that knife”, then maybe targeting guns was not the correct solution to the problem.

Worth mentioning the USofA is much worse per capita than the UK after adjusting for population size differences.

Uniform firearm regulations in the UK reduced the per capita post war firearm incidents, now similar campaigns are targeting knife crimes.

It's a layered approach - anybody that believes there's a single solution would be foolish.

Wow, no shit the gun ban reduced firearm crimes. By “layered approach” I suppose you mean this cycle: people commit crimes -> ban the most popular method -> crime displaces -> ban the most popular method. Continuously claim that you’re “doing something” by addressing symptoms and feel superior, while also completely ignoring root causes. Now that’s some McKinsey shit.

You've gone off on some bizarre tangent here.

Forget guns, there are issues with poisons, explosives, driving cars, lasers, etc.

Limiting access to any of these to those with substance abuse issues, domestic violence isues, repeated criminal propensity; requiring training in the basics to handle and deal provably reduce incidents while continuing use by those with a need.

Do such things stop all incidents?

No. Nothing is perfect but by your 'logic' seatbelts should be discarded, closely packed houses should not adhere to fire safety protocols, etc.

Clearly something is working, they have a much lower homicide rate than the US. I'm against gun bans, but I'm not going to act like the homicide rates are similar, the US is a (relative to other western nations, if that's our cut off) a very violent country.

Compared to mass shootings, mass stabbings are not as serious, really. You would need dozens of people to stand meekly and watch a stabber work down the line to get the same number hurt that a person with an automatic gun can kill in a few seconds.

Like France for instance?

Uhm, we’ve had militarized police for a decade now… All those kids are dead nevertheless. So back up your argument kindly ?

You use Uvalde as an example, where the police infamously did not do anything to save the kids and in fact prevented parents from saving their own kids.

Having the police be militarized makes it far easier to convict them when they don't do their jobs.

The parkland resource officer just got acquitted, partly because he wasn't equipped to rush the attacker.

Militarized police would have no excuse, and would be easy to convict for cowardness.

Is cowardice a crime?

I found this: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/899

> Militarized police would have no excuse

They'd have the same excuse they have now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonza...

Then again, if they did change that and use military-style regulations, complete with desertion and cowardice rules, maybe the equivalent of military police (police police?) can stamp out corruption and violence against the public, in the same way that a soldier stealing supplies or deliberately harming civilians would be (should be) punished harshly by a military court.

I think what you want is a gendarmerie.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie

So as usual, more guns. Brilliant, decades of school shootings and your solution is to throw more guns at the problem.

Honestly if you like guns, you should really hope you don't get what you're asking for. Because once the inevitable happens and it becomes clear that more guns isn't helping there's only one direction that can go - gun control.

But haven’t we been there for years…and nothing is changing? Or at least not in the direction you’re suggesting.

Seems obvious to me as well: we tried normalizing gun culture and this is what we got. Maybe we should try something else?

What I mean is that at a certain point they can't keep up the "if only X could have had a gun" line, because at that point they will have had a gun and the conclusion that guns aren't helping will be unavoidable.

The left will never have the votes to pass a constitutional amendment and the supreme court is no longer full of activists, good luck.

How about you all first try to enforce the existing laws around prohibited persons owning firearms, like Hunter Biden.

If school shootings continue and there are no options, it's not "the left" you'll have to worry about. It's everyone.

You needn't wish me good luck. I live in a country where guns are already legal, available and even relatively widespread but controlled. We don't have these shootings.

edit: ahhh you came back and edited in a little Hunter Biden joke! I have some bad news for you, "the left" doesn't like Joe or Hunter Biden. They'll tolerate Joe as an alternative to a Trump or DeSantis, and they'll probably concede that Hunter is probably less irritating than the Trump boys. If you want to take a swing at a leftie you need to target someone they actually like - Bernie Sanders or someone like that. If Hunter Biden has broken some firearms law, throw the book at him.

I actually live in America. Never going to happen.

Edit: its not a joke, most mass shooters (they play games with that definition, if you look at just shootings where 2 or more are injured or killed) were already prohibited from owning firearms under the law. Yet the justice department seems to have little appetite to enforce those laws.

Thoughts and prayers then!

The supreme court is very much an activist court. You just happen to like what they're doing.

And then you bring Hunter Biden into the chat ffs.

I am pretty sure the Supreme Court has held up that cops have no inherent need "to protect" citizens and you can't sue them for that. Qualified immunity covers this. Castle Rock v. Gonzalez. Essentially the only thing that gets them in trouble is flat out breaking the law. (Robbery, gross assault, laundering, etc)

Lol they will find some excuse like “the officers feared for their lives and acted in the best interests of the community” or something regardless of how many guns they have. Militarization of the police has nothing to do with it

I think most of the people exposed to those events are begging for sane gun control.

They had militarised police in Uvalde, lots of good guys with guns, remind me again how that worked out?

They weren’t very useful in either Parkland or Uvalde. I think at the point where you’ve got a fucked up person, determined to kill, with easy access to firearms and a culture where “a school shooting” is a regular thing, you’ve already lost. Giving the police more or less guns is sort of meaningless to this discussion, they’ve proven to be hopeless. You need to be tackling broader societal problems and looking closely at whether the second amendment’s “well-regulated militia” really means “anyone can have a gun”

To add to that, I would listen to what this ex-member of the SAS says on this very topic, and how difficult it is to actually undertake (and he was the guy who helped with the terrorist attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi, so he has some direct experience): https://youtu.be/h3CNLY7fSzU?t=1797

I feel like many people would hear his words and not really process them. To you or I Craighead is saying something quite sensible - "you need to be ready and prepared to actually do this, and you probably aren't and won't be". But I've seen a lot of guys just parroting things like "be ready to use lethal force if you have to" to sound tough and as a sort of self-motivation, without really thinking about what they're saying.

I've no idea who is mentally prepared or adequately trained to pull out a gun and tackle a mass shooter, but I'd be very surprised if the overwhelming majority of gun enthusiasts didn't just do something like this in that situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saQ72NZtrS0

Yeah, and in total, he says it is about having all of (mentality * training * mental agility) to deal with such a situation. Given the low entrance requirements for joining a typical police force, I doubt many officers out there have all of those things in place, let alone civilians.

> I've no idea who is mentally prepared or adequately trained to pull out a gun and tackle a mass shooter

His name is Elisjsha Dicken. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62217263

There are multiple documented instances of armed civilians stopping mass shooters. I think you’d be surprised indeed. See if you can find the footage from the West Freeway Church shooting in Texas a few years back—multiple members of the congregation were carrying and drew their weapons once the shooting started, but none of them reacted as you suggest.

The Uvalde cops were cowards who have no business serving in law enforcement. That’s the long and short of it.

If your hope is that every cop and/or gun owner magically transforms into this Elisjsha person, then I think you're going to be disappointed.

You’re the one posting a video of someone acting like an idiot in a road rage incident and suggesting that’s what the typical gun owner does in a self defense situation. That’s simply not the case. Don’t turn this around and move the goalposts.

Dicken was a hero in that incident, but he was also an ordinary civilian exercising his right to carry a concealed weapon in public. Incidentally, the same YouTuber who interviewed that SAS man made a video about Dicken; he explains the point a lot better than I probably can: https://youtu.be/mA7Rb-EX4K4

And when it comes to cops, stop making excuses for the cowards in Uvalde. I am disappointed in them, and I have every right to be.

And, at that time, hopefully society will realize that the parent has this militant request was traumatized and is making irrational demands.

To me, fewer guns sounds like a better solution than more guns.

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