One of the more infuriating and confounding aspects of incidents like Roger Fortson's shooting is how police insist that their "specialized training and experience" gives them unimpeachable credibility when enforcing the law, but when they f*ck up they say "hey, cops are only human" and get qualified immunity. It can't be both. As JVL po…
One of the more infuriating and confounding aspects of incidents like Roger Fortson's shooting is how police insist that their "specialized training and experience" gives them unimpeachable credibility when enforcing the law, but when they f*ck up they say "hey, cops are only human" and get qualified immunity. It can't be both. As JVL points out...this deputy doesn't appear to have followed the most basic of procedures for this incident. But the police union will back him because the only thing a cop can do to get on the wrong side of a police union is to rat out another cop.
Lots of folks are commenting below, suggesting the problem is really a police training problem (or similar). And, no doubt, that's a key. (As another commenter pointed out, police fatality rates are overblow - turns out cops aren't even in the top 10 of deadliest professions.)
But, here's the thing. As JVL points out "Our societal inability to make hard political choices has resulted in the worst of all worlds. And in the worst of all worlds, the game theory answer is that you should shoot first and deal with the possible legal fallout second."
This is the world we live in. Often left out of the gun debate is "gun culture". It's what's driving things. It's what's given us the worst of all worlds. There are lots of countries with high gun ownership rates, but they don't have nearly our firearms injury/death rates. How many Swiss gov't officials sent Christmas cards with their families posing with arsenals?
And, cops are not immune to this. So even if the hard data doesn't support them being trigger happy, gun culture does. With the emphasis on stand-your-ground laws thrown into the mix (and several court cases to back it up), it's no wonder people (including cops) shoot first and ask questions later.
I had not thought about what it must be like to be a LEO in gun culture. No excuses for police who are poorly trained, trigger happy, not accountable because of unions, or otherwise not doing the job. But to go to work every day knowing that you’re at risk of being in the line of fire of some idiot who yells “Second Amendment” as he shoots first…how do you create responsible police for that? Militarization of the police is inevitable when the Second Amendment creates war zones.
Cops pull triggers because they're scared. What you call militarization of the police often amounts to gear to make them safer. Example: the armored cars, which people derivisvely refer to as tanks. Cops protected by those vehicle are less likely to panic and pull triggers.
I dont think this is it, Tom. Yes, the militarization of police is some of the gear. But also the mindset of us against them, warrior vs guardian, and that they are in a war zone. I dont think you'll find any evidence the armored cars make these cops less likely to panic — my guess is these cops are more likely to be aggressive, as they are protected and, well, in a tank.
I agree. Yet let's us not forget that this type of behavior is not new. Police have been able to operate with impunity basically since founding..which was an outgrowth of the posses organized to find run away slaves and fugitives.
It speaks to the power of marketing that this history is forgotten and when folks think of police they think of the Rockwell painti ng
No municipality with fewer than 250,000 residents INSIDE CITY LIMITS, not in the metro area, should be allowed to have SWAT units or armored vehicles. Smaller cities and towns CAN'T AFFORD the training needed to make such units effective in true emergencies. Alternatively, REQUIRE a minimum annual aggregate training budget for such units which only departments with 500 or more sworn officers could afford.
The problem with Uvalde was that the least qualified cop around fell into being the incident commander, with predictable results. Where I live, the armored car is part of a mutual assistance arrangement involving multiple jurisdictions.
Since there are usually STATE police in most parts of most states, I'd prefer state police to run such units and keep and maintain all such equipment. Local police could be trained and certified to join such paramilitary units, but leadership would be at state police level where there's sufficient budget and (God help us!) sufficiently frequent need for paramilitary police to keep tactical skills fresh.
A town with 25K people just isn't able to man and equip a TRAINED paramilitary police unit. Sadly, Texans would never acknowledge that.
If you were married to a cop, you would worry every day whether he (or she) is coming home that night alive or in a box.
You can't blame the average cop for the programming he/she has acquired from the culture they live in, which anger and fear justifies itself by the response it generates when it acts on duty.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I figure the real problem with US policing is in the sergeants, lieutenants, captains and higher WHO DIDN'T GET CAUGHT earlier in their careers but are just as rotten apples as any patrol officers they've had to fire.
I always appreciate your perspective on some of these matters. You are one-thousand percent correct. There is a training and culture issue with the police, but the overall gun culture is the primary driver.
One of the things that's always struck me in the gun debate is (I'm generalizing, of course), the anti-gun side focuses on the guns. The pro-gun side focuses on "mental health" (or some such). Both manage to miss the root cause.
But stand-your-ground would apply here to Mr. Fortson, not the policeman. In the end this appears, typically, to come down to skin color, whoever holds the gun.. Gov. Abbott is merely rubbing our faces in it, since he can, with impunity.
The problem, as I see it, is that it applies to everyone in such a situation. Racism may or may not have been a factor in the policeman's quick shooting. (Also worth bearing in mind: any such racism could be explicit or implicit.)
A separate problem is the law and its interpretation. The pattern I'm seeing is "whoever shoots first wins". It seems all that's required is for the shooter to mumble 'I feared for my life'.
Finally, while these are two separate issues, certainly the former can influence (and change the outcome of) the latter.
"I feared for my life" is permitted only to white people, particularly when a cop is being defended against. I submit this is the consequence of intentionally created racism.
It is undestandable that police fear the populace, given the now multi-decade multi-pronged campaigns to create and exacerbate racial animus and resentment, and implant ineradicable pre-cognitive subconscious associations in white minds of [minorities<==> crime<==>violence<==>existential menace]. Given the inevitable effect this program has had on the overall culture, it is even more understandable that the populace (the non-white populace) justly fear the police.
It is in the interest of those who drive this antagonism to maximize its emotional effect and suppress as much as possible of what Kahneman calls System II cognitive processing that could mitigate it. The goal does not differ in essence from the goals of the wannabe rulers in Yugoslavia after Tito's passing opened up paths of advancement the compromise post-war regime closed off. When people are at one another's throats, they can be readily led by the nose. At first.
This is not accidental, although of course these campaigns take on lives of their own; and their provocateurs generally don't set out to bring down their entire civilization, but merely to rearrange the parts to their benefit. In their folly, they always seem to imagine, as the otherwise forgettable Leroy Pope Walker famously said, that all the blood spilled will be manageably collected with a handkerchief or two.
And of course sometimes the instigators really are psychopathic monsters... Robespierres, Pol Pots, Stalins, Hitlers. But mostly they are just blinded by personal hubris. In Charlie Sykes' brilliant analogy, they breed little alligators... and fail to recognize the day the reptile has grown past the point of manageability. In their blindness and folly they keep feeding it... and come only far too late (if ever) to "oh my god what have I done".
You can't fix this with police training. Once the entire culture has been poisoned, its momentum and an energy generates its own fuel.
What is most disgusting about this is how petty and miserable the immediate objectives of the perpetrators really are. The NRA abandoned its gun safety mission and turned to preaching a cult of firearm worship ... because its leadership found doing so brought in a stream of boodle to spend on themselves... and the weapons industry wanted to goose up demand. The racism was just an instrumentality so that fearful white people would want ten guns where before they only owned two. And of course politicians found that the race terror helped them obtain political office and turn those offices from elective positions into de facto sinecures -- in which, once installed, they could aggrandize themselves with graft and privileges. Vide Duncan Hunter -- committing multiple felonies and what he got out of it were souvenirs from Disney world... and some adulterous ski trips.
At bottom one has to say it is pathetic and sadly stupid and small. It's not even dignifiable, as the John Goodman character says of National Socialism in the Big Lebowski, as a malign ideology. It's just fuck-dumb petty assholery and tiny minded greed. Which in the end results in a stupid war of all against all for no reason whatsovever.
Those of us fighting this may see ourselves as Horatii on the bridge, or doomed Leonidases holding a pass without hope against a magnificent foe; but what we really are up against is a horde of cheap three card monte tricksters and high-BMI split pants bullies whose highest aspirations reach to the level of looking up pornography on the internet.
It has been justly said that one may be judged by the measure of one's foes. In which case, big disappointment...
I'm fairly ignorant on Tito (just the basics), so I'll skip that bit.
Re: systemic racism, pretty much yep. Re: "pre-cognitive subconscious", I often think this aspect is overlooked. One of my phil profs had a term he liked: racialist. The idea of implicit, often inchoate racism. There are plenty of folks that, if asked directly, would claim they aren't racist. And, in most ways, they don't appear to be. Representative of a particular segment, "White resentment" is a phrase we've heard a bit recently. Anyhow, I agree with you, the point being the incident under discussion doesn't require loud-mouthed belligerent (stereotyped) racists.
"You can't fix this with police training." - agreed, yet you gotta start somewhere. And/or, try to tactically address the manifestations of the deeper issue where you can.
"It's just fuck-dumb petty assholery and tiny minded greed." - yeah, this is the sad, but big, take-away for me. ("what we really are up against is a horde of cheap three card monte tricksters and high-BMI split pants bullies whose highest aspirations reach to the level of looking up pornography on the internet" - ha, OK, 5 pts for that; very funny! You may not like this, but that struck me as something KDW at the Dispatch would write.) We often imagine Lex Luthor as our evil enemy, but instead it's someone like Trump.
Throw in the uphill asymmetry we face (it turns out "rape and pillage" is easier than nation building) and, well, here we are. On the flip side, I guess we should be happy and impressed that we've managed to create so much for the barbarians to destroy! ;-)
I am trying to understand and anticipate what a future Thucydides (my ideal ancient historian) would write of us and our age. I am not coming up with an encouraging narrative.
He was no democrat. I think today he would say “I told you so”.
Now go look at the death rates by firearms. Even more gun culture on display. (That was the point re: Switzerland.)
Also, the high per-capita ownership rate actually supports the "gun culture" idea in an odd way. While that number is 4 times higher than Switzerland, what's interesting is the number of households with guns. It's something like 2x. What this tells us is that people that own guns in the US own several guns.
Well, I wasn't equating the US to Switzerland. Rather, using the Swiss as an example of a country with (relative to the world broadly) high gun ownership rates and yet a very low firearm casualty rate. That just happened to be the example that popped up. One could also look at Canada, for instance.
The point being that having a lot of guns doesn't necessarily lead to what we experience in the US. The guns may be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.
Oh good grief. I never said you were equating the US and Switzerland. No country has "lots of guns" in any way that compares to the US. A better comparison might be the US when the NRA was a gun safety organization rather than a gun culture organization. There was a time when the NRA membership was almost completely hunters and sportsmen. These days the NRA is openly courting civilian right-wing political militia types.
Heh, at this point I'm not sure if we're agreeing or disagreeing (and about what). :-)
But my original point was fairly simple: a country can have a high gun ownership rate* and not have a commensurate firearm casualty rate. I.e. there are other ingredients at work.
*NB: this doesn't imply anything about being the same rate as the US. Or imply the US doesn't have the highest rate, or anything else like that.
| you should shoot first and deal with the possible legal fallout second.
Absolutely the most glaringly obvious rule for those living in the US today. Not just police. Consider Perry in Texas. Had his victim fired 1st, he may still be alive AND not in prison.
Welcome to the US, where everyone is hair-trigger. Woe to those who consider that metaphorical.
| There are lots of countries with high gun ownership rates, but they don't have
| nearly our firearms injury/death rates.
May need to consider the possibility that the US represents a unique combination of violent tendencies and adulation of ignorance. In simple terms, we're generally too stupid to realize how dangerous we are.
"In simple terms, we're generally too stupid to realize how dangerous we are." - heh, that's my general take on humans. Applied across the board.
"May need to consider the possibility that the US represents a unique combination..." - that could well be, but I'd still like to understand what it is and how it works. If we're ever going to address it, step 1: understand the problem. OK, maybe step 1 is admit you have a problem. :-)
Maybe applicable to all humans, but when it comes to imperiling each others' lives, it's NECESSARY to acknowledge true American exceptionalism.
As for understanding it, American children grow up steeped in the romantic heroism of the armed citizenry defeating the Hessians at Trenton and the Red Coats at Saratoga and Yorktown. [Tangent: too few know about Cowpens.] Then there's the Wild West (extending to WW1 thanks to Pershing's incursion into Mexico), the heroic Sgt York in WW1, then gangsters in the 1920s, and all of those cemented into the American psyche thanks to B movies from the 1930s on. We Americans REVERE the armed renegade ready, willing and eager to shoot others.
Correcting that would require bankrupting Hollywood. Good luck with that. To be clearer, there's BIG $$$$ in Americans being and remaining as violent as we are.
"Florida Sheriff's Deputy," just a continuation of the ignorant white trash redneck scum usually associated with "Southern Just Us." We have to get rid of the "warrior cop" in American policing. Kicking down doors at midnight in Baghdad has to stop being an "experience qualification."
The irony is that former soldiers who kicked down doors in Baghdad and are now cops all say how they had much clear, more humane rules of engagement, discipline and accountability than police in the US.
Police are essential, but there is a lot of planned messaging that makes them superheroes rather than human beings who can fuck up and end a life. Or a person with severe biases or psychological deficiencies must be examined.
I come from a family of cops. My Dad, brother, several uncles all uniformed police. I get the need. It is just infuriating to know that, in all likelihood, the cop who killed this young airman will not suffer consequences.
There is a difference between backing a bogus story--not ratting out another cop--and the police union doing their job, part of which is to defend members accused of misconduct.
One of the more infuriating and confounding aspects of incidents like Roger Fortson's shooting is how police insist that their "specialized training and experience" gives them unimpeachable credibility when enforcing the law, but when they f*ck up they say "hey, cops are only human" and get qualified immunity. It can't be both. As JVL points out...this deputy doesn't appear to have followed the most basic of procedures for this incident. But the police union will back him because the only thing a cop can do to get on the wrong side of a police union is to rat out another cop.
Excellent point.
Lots of folks are commenting below, suggesting the problem is really a police training problem (or similar). And, no doubt, that's a key. (As another commenter pointed out, police fatality rates are overblow - turns out cops aren't even in the top 10 of deadliest professions.)
But, here's the thing. As JVL points out "Our societal inability to make hard political choices has resulted in the worst of all worlds. And in the worst of all worlds, the game theory answer is that you should shoot first and deal with the possible legal fallout second."
This is the world we live in. Often left out of the gun debate is "gun culture". It's what's driving things. It's what's given us the worst of all worlds. There are lots of countries with high gun ownership rates, but they don't have nearly our firearms injury/death rates. How many Swiss gov't officials sent Christmas cards with their families posing with arsenals?
And, cops are not immune to this. So even if the hard data doesn't support them being trigger happy, gun culture does. With the emphasis on stand-your-ground laws thrown into the mix (and several court cases to back it up), it's no wonder people (including cops) shoot first and ask questions later.
I had not thought about what it must be like to be a LEO in gun culture. No excuses for police who are poorly trained, trigger happy, not accountable because of unions, or otherwise not doing the job. But to go to work every day knowing that you’re at risk of being in the line of fire of some idiot who yells “Second Amendment” as he shoots first…how do you create responsible police for that? Militarization of the police is inevitable when the Second Amendment creates war zones.
Exactly. A race to the bottom. Just what the NRA was hoping for.
Cops pull triggers because they're scared. What you call militarization of the police often amounts to gear to make them safer. Example: the armored cars, which people derivisvely refer to as tanks. Cops protected by those vehicle are less likely to panic and pull triggers.
I dont think this is it, Tom. Yes, the militarization of police is some of the gear. But also the mindset of us against them, warrior vs guardian, and that they are in a war zone. I dont think you'll find any evidence the armored cars make these cops less likely to panic — my guess is these cops are more likely to be aggressive, as they are protected and, well, in a tank.
Warrior Cop training
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/warrior-cop-class-dave-grossman-killology.html
I agree. Yet let's us not forget that this type of behavior is not new. Police have been able to operate with impunity basically since founding..which was an outgrowth of the posses organized to find run away slaves and fugitives.
It speaks to the power of marketing that this history is forgotten and when folks think of police they think of the Rockwell painti ng
| when folks think of police they think of the Rockwell painting
Or the Keystone Cops. Or Shield these days.
Consider Uvalde, TX.
No municipality with fewer than 250,000 residents INSIDE CITY LIMITS, not in the metro area, should be allowed to have SWAT units or armored vehicles. Smaller cities and towns CAN'T AFFORD the training needed to make such units effective in true emergencies. Alternatively, REQUIRE a minimum annual aggregate training budget for such units which only departments with 500 or more sworn officers could afford.
The problem with Uvalde was that the least qualified cop around fell into being the incident commander, with predictable results. Where I live, the armored car is part of a mutual assistance arrangement involving multiple jurisdictions.
Since there are usually STATE police in most parts of most states, I'd prefer state police to run such units and keep and maintain all such equipment. Local police could be trained and certified to join such paramilitary units, but leadership would be at state police level where there's sufficient budget and (God help us!) sufficiently frequent need for paramilitary police to keep tactical skills fresh.
A town with 25K people just isn't able to man and equip a TRAINED paramilitary police unit. Sadly, Texans would never acknowledge that.
LOL. Which situation in recent memory have you seen where it’s necessary for a police department to respond in APCs.
If you were married to a cop, you would worry every day whether he (or she) is coming home that night alive or in a box.
You can't blame the average cop for the programming he/she has acquired from the culture they live in, which anger and fear justifies itself by the response it generates when it acts on duty.
| No excuses for police who are poorly trained
Or the voters who allow them to be so poorly trained because those voters aren't willing to pay for adequate training?
See the training section in https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-police-compare-different-democracies .
A fine example of US policing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rjEKFmHzw&ab_channel=CBSTEXAS
Explain that as anything other than being African-American == being a target.
And if that seems extreme, more mundane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8zK4__9QhM&ab_channel=ABC10News
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I figure the real problem with US policing is in the sergeants, lieutenants, captains and higher WHO DIDN'T GET CAUGHT earlier in their careers but are just as rotten apples as any patrol officers they've had to fire.
I always appreciate your perspective on some of these matters. You are one-thousand percent correct. There is a training and culture issue with the police, but the overall gun culture is the primary driver.
Thanks!
One of the things that's always struck me in the gun debate is (I'm generalizing, of course), the anti-gun side focuses on the guns. The pro-gun side focuses on "mental health" (or some such). Both manage to miss the root cause.
One has to wonder about the mental health of those who ascribe to a culture of gun lust.
But stand-your-ground would apply here to Mr. Fortson, not the policeman. In the end this appears, typically, to come down to skin color, whoever holds the gun.. Gov. Abbott is merely rubbing our faces in it, since he can, with impunity.
The problem, as I see it, is that it applies to everyone in such a situation. Racism may or may not have been a factor in the policeman's quick shooting. (Also worth bearing in mind: any such racism could be explicit or implicit.)
A separate problem is the law and its interpretation. The pattern I'm seeing is "whoever shoots first wins". It seems all that's required is for the shooter to mumble 'I feared for my life'.
Finally, while these are two separate issues, certainly the former can influence (and change the outcome of) the latter.
"I feared for my life" is permitted only to white people, particularly when a cop is being defended against. I submit this is the consequence of intentionally created racism.
It is undestandable that police fear the populace, given the now multi-decade multi-pronged campaigns to create and exacerbate racial animus and resentment, and implant ineradicable pre-cognitive subconscious associations in white minds of [minorities<==> crime<==>violence<==>existential menace]. Given the inevitable effect this program has had on the overall culture, it is even more understandable that the populace (the non-white populace) justly fear the police.
It is in the interest of those who drive this antagonism to maximize its emotional effect and suppress as much as possible of what Kahneman calls System II cognitive processing that could mitigate it. The goal does not differ in essence from the goals of the wannabe rulers in Yugoslavia after Tito's passing opened up paths of advancement the compromise post-war regime closed off. When people are at one another's throats, they can be readily led by the nose. At first.
This is not accidental, although of course these campaigns take on lives of their own; and their provocateurs generally don't set out to bring down their entire civilization, but merely to rearrange the parts to their benefit. In their folly, they always seem to imagine, as the otherwise forgettable Leroy Pope Walker famously said, that all the blood spilled will be manageably collected with a handkerchief or two.
And of course sometimes the instigators really are psychopathic monsters... Robespierres, Pol Pots, Stalins, Hitlers. But mostly they are just blinded by personal hubris. In Charlie Sykes' brilliant analogy, they breed little alligators... and fail to recognize the day the reptile has grown past the point of manageability. In their blindness and folly they keep feeding it... and come only far too late (if ever) to "oh my god what have I done".
You can't fix this with police training. Once the entire culture has been poisoned, its momentum and an energy generates its own fuel.
What is most disgusting about this is how petty and miserable the immediate objectives of the perpetrators really are. The NRA abandoned its gun safety mission and turned to preaching a cult of firearm worship ... because its leadership found doing so brought in a stream of boodle to spend on themselves... and the weapons industry wanted to goose up demand. The racism was just an instrumentality so that fearful white people would want ten guns where before they only owned two. And of course politicians found that the race terror helped them obtain political office and turn those offices from elective positions into de facto sinecures -- in which, once installed, they could aggrandize themselves with graft and privileges. Vide Duncan Hunter -- committing multiple felonies and what he got out of it were souvenirs from Disney world... and some adulterous ski trips.
At bottom one has to say it is pathetic and sadly stupid and small. It's not even dignifiable, as the John Goodman character says of National Socialism in the Big Lebowski, as a malign ideology. It's just fuck-dumb petty assholery and tiny minded greed. Which in the end results in a stupid war of all against all for no reason whatsovever.
Those of us fighting this may see ourselves as Horatii on the bridge, or doomed Leonidases holding a pass without hope against a magnificent foe; but what we really are up against is a horde of cheap three card monte tricksters and high-BMI split pants bullies whose highest aspirations reach to the level of looking up pornography on the internet.
It has been justly said that one may be judged by the measure of one's foes. In which case, big disappointment...
Good comment, thanks. Lots to unpack.
I'm fairly ignorant on Tito (just the basics), so I'll skip that bit.
Re: systemic racism, pretty much yep. Re: "pre-cognitive subconscious", I often think this aspect is overlooked. One of my phil profs had a term he liked: racialist. The idea of implicit, often inchoate racism. There are plenty of folks that, if asked directly, would claim they aren't racist. And, in most ways, they don't appear to be. Representative of a particular segment, "White resentment" is a phrase we've heard a bit recently. Anyhow, I agree with you, the point being the incident under discussion doesn't require loud-mouthed belligerent (stereotyped) racists.
"You can't fix this with police training." - agreed, yet you gotta start somewhere. And/or, try to tactically address the manifestations of the deeper issue where you can.
"It's just fuck-dumb petty assholery and tiny minded greed." - yeah, this is the sad, but big, take-away for me. ("what we really are up against is a horde of cheap three card monte tricksters and high-BMI split pants bullies whose highest aspirations reach to the level of looking up pornography on the internet" - ha, OK, 5 pts for that; very funny! You may not like this, but that struck me as something KDW at the Dispatch would write.) We often imagine Lex Luthor as our evil enemy, but instead it's someone like Trump.
Throw in the uphill asymmetry we face (it turns out "rape and pillage" is easier than nation building) and, well, here we are. On the flip side, I guess we should be happy and impressed that we've managed to create so much for the barbarians to destroy! ;-)
I am trying to understand and anticipate what a future Thucydides (my ideal ancient historian) would write of us and our age. I am not coming up with an encouraging narrative.
He was no democrat. I think today he would say “I told you so”.
No country come close to the gun ownership rate of the US. The US rate is more than 4 times that of Switzerland, and twice the second highest country. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country
Yep. Gun culture at work.
Now go look at the death rates by firearms. Even more gun culture on display. (That was the point re: Switzerland.)
Also, the high per-capita ownership rate actually supports the "gun culture" idea in an odd way. While that number is 4 times higher than Switzerland, what's interesting is the number of households with guns. It's something like 2x. What this tells us is that people that own guns in the US own several guns.
I am not denying America's hideous gun culture. I am only disputing putting the US in the same category as Switzerland. Los of data charts here: https://www.kdnuggets.com/2012/12/new-poll-gun-violence-vs-gun-ownership.html
There is no comparison. Anywhere that isn't an actual war zone. America has a serious gun culture/gun lust problem.
Right now in America, there have been more mass shootings this year than there are days. This happens nowhere else.
Ah.
Well, I wasn't equating the US to Switzerland. Rather, using the Swiss as an example of a country with (relative to the world broadly) high gun ownership rates and yet a very low firearm casualty rate. That just happened to be the example that popped up. One could also look at Canada, for instance.
The point being that having a lot of guns doesn't necessarily lead to what we experience in the US. The guns may be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.
Oh good grief. I never said you were equating the US and Switzerland. No country has "lots of guns" in any way that compares to the US. A better comparison might be the US when the NRA was a gun safety organization rather than a gun culture organization. There was a time when the NRA membership was almost completely hunters and sportsmen. These days the NRA is openly courting civilian right-wing political militia types.
Heh, at this point I'm not sure if we're agreeing or disagreeing (and about what). :-)
But my original point was fairly simple: a country can have a high gun ownership rate* and not have a commensurate firearm casualty rate. I.e. there are other ingredients at work.
*NB: this doesn't imply anything about being the same rate as the US. Or imply the US doesn't have the highest rate, or anything else like that.
| you should shoot first and deal with the possible legal fallout second.
Absolutely the most glaringly obvious rule for those living in the US today. Not just police. Consider Perry in Texas. Had his victim fired 1st, he may still be alive AND not in prison.
Welcome to the US, where everyone is hair-trigger. Woe to those who consider that metaphorical.
| There are lots of countries with high gun ownership rates, but they don't have
| nearly our firearms injury/death rates.
May need to consider the possibility that the US represents a unique combination of violent tendencies and adulation of ignorance. In simple terms, we're generally too stupid to realize how dangerous we are.
"In simple terms, we're generally too stupid to realize how dangerous we are." - heh, that's my general take on humans. Applied across the board.
"May need to consider the possibility that the US represents a unique combination..." - that could well be, but I'd still like to understand what it is and how it works. If we're ever going to address it, step 1: understand the problem. OK, maybe step 1 is admit you have a problem. :-)
Maybe applicable to all humans, but when it comes to imperiling each others' lives, it's NECESSARY to acknowledge true American exceptionalism.
As for understanding it, American children grow up steeped in the romantic heroism of the armed citizenry defeating the Hessians at Trenton and the Red Coats at Saratoga and Yorktown. [Tangent: too few know about Cowpens.] Then there's the Wild West (extending to WW1 thanks to Pershing's incursion into Mexico), the heroic Sgt York in WW1, then gangsters in the 1920s, and all of those cemented into the American psyche thanks to B movies from the 1930s on. We Americans REVERE the armed renegade ready, willing and eager to shoot others.
Correcting that would require bankrupting Hollywood. Good luck with that. To be clearer, there's BIG $$$$ in Americans being and remaining as violent as we are.
"Florida Sheriff's Deputy," just a continuation of the ignorant white trash redneck scum usually associated with "Southern Just Us." We have to get rid of the "warrior cop" in American policing. Kicking down doors at midnight in Baghdad has to stop being an "experience qualification."
The irony is that former soldiers who kicked down doors in Baghdad and are now cops all say how they had much clear, more humane rules of engagement, discipline and accountability than police in the US.
Oh really? What about Falluja?
Police are essential, but there is a lot of planned messaging that makes them superheroes rather than human beings who can fuck up and end a life. Or a person with severe biases or psychological deficiencies must be examined.
I come from a family of cops. My Dad, brother, several uncles all uniformed police. I get the need. It is just infuriating to know that, in all likelihood, the cop who killed this young airman will not suffer consequences.
There is a difference between backing a bogus story--not ratting out another cop--and the police union doing their job, part of which is to defend members accused of misconduct.
It seems to me that is what their only job.
Qualified immunity needs to go the way of Republicans conceding electoral defeats.