A total of 111 people were killed by police in the United States in March of 2015. Since 1900, in the entire United Kingdom, 52 people have been killed by police.Yeah.
Those numbers are real. A total of 111 people were killed by police in the United States in March of 2015. Since 1900, in the entire United Kingdom, 52 people have been killed by police.
Don't bother adjusting for population differences, or poverty, or mental illness, or anything else. The sheer fact that American police kill TWICE as many people per month as police have killed in the modern history of the United Kingdom is sick, preposterous, and alarming.
I would not actually lay the blame for this so much on a barbaric American police force, as I would that they are firearm carrying public servants in a country where virtually EVERYBODY has access to an arsenal of deadly weaponry.
A police officer in England responding to a robbery or domestic violence call can have some assurance he will not have to face a barrage of bullets, but an American cop knows full well that at any time he might come face to face with an armed assailant and is constantly on high alert with his hand on his gun.
That is the price we pay for our precious 2nd Amendment.
A fantasy of personal defense.
A reality of unnecessary death.
Also consider that the UK had quite relaxed gun control policy until after the horrible Dunblane school massacre in 1996.
ReplyDeleteWe're # 1! (if we are keep going to say that we believe in American Exceptionalism, we need to identify where it is that we are exceptional)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I dare 'em to. Their only answer is military.
DeleteAnd even our military hasn't decisively won a battle since WWII. Moreover, most of the world's problems today are not resolvable by any military, including ours. We now live in a multi-polar world (multiple world-level powers, not just one), not a uni-polar world that is controlled by the USA. Not enough bullets or soldiers to kill all the moslems, and carpet-bombing them only creates more and more and more terrorists – turning our military (and national) exceptionalism on its head.
DeleteI did my final report on this statistic some 25 years ago in college. (Criminal Justice degree, tyvm!) Last I heard, Bobbies aren't armed with firearms. Same goes for many other civilized nations. Your post makes sense to me! 'Murica... we're numba one!
ReplyDeleteWe're number one!!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2015/04/04/us/tulsa-police-shooting/index.html
My new next-door neighbor is a police officer. I feel so safe! He has no gun. Police officers here do not have guns!
ReplyDeleteOne of the primary reasons that we moved to the UK was the insanity in the US regarding gun issues. Love it.
"I would not actually lay the blame for this so much on a barbaric American police force, as I would that they are firearm carrying public servants in a country where virtually EVERYBODY has access to an arsenal of deadly weaponry. "
ReplyDeleteAs the sister of a cop, I thank you for this. Comparing the US to Great Britain has always annoyed me, because GB does not have a 200+ year history of a heavily armed citizenry. British criminals do not have the NRA and the 2nd Amendment.
Yes, some American cops are trigger-happy assholes and some are on power trips, but all of them live with the knowledge that every time they pull a car over for speeding, answer a domestic, or break up a bar fight, someone could pull a gun on them. Most cops know officers who have been shot. And that does make them more jumpy and more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
In my brother's area, there are several heavily armed sovereign citizen groups, and a few years ago, members of one shot and killed a cop (whose wife was pregnant) and paralyzed another. Next time someone from one of those groups so much as scratches his armpit during a traffic stop, the cops will shoot to kill. Is that okay? No. Understandable? I think so.
In his district, judges refuse to enforce common-sense gun laws. The cops arrest someone for a domestic; the judge says, "Give him back his guns"; the cops have no choice but to comply with the judge's orders. They know that arming a domestic abuser makes it FAR more likely that the victim and/or police themselves will be killed by the abuser. They think this is a good, needed gun-control law. They cannot enforce it if the judges don't back them up.
I don't love that my brother has an NRA membership and straps on at least two guns every time he runs to the grocery store. I do kind of understand why. The cops are not blameless, and some of them (Darren Wilson) seem very good at escalating violence, but they are often going up against criminals who have far superior weaponry to what they have and lack any scruples. They live with the knowledge every day that just doing their job could get them killed. If someone is going to be shot, they understandably want to be the one pulling the trigger.
I am not sure what the solution is. But it isn't ALL or even, I think, mostly the cops' fault.
Anonymous 10:29, thank you for your comment. I see the cops consistently going softer on armed whites than on unarmed blacks and other people of color. Some day, I think, the cops will wake up to regret this. Not dealing with a bully, particularly an armed bully, at the early stages merely creates a much deadlier bully in the long run. Eventually, due to whitie gun-toting and to the cops pussy-footing around them, the cops will no longer be able to effectively control or police America. As a result of that, we will have either, a cop-apartheid situation (cops going only after people of color), or complete anarchy. JMO.
Delete'''American police have killed more people just in March than British police have since 1900.'''
ReplyDeleteWTF! This is a national disgrace. I
Your average every day police-person does not carry a gun here, nor do they have weapons in their cars. We do have a certain percentage of fire-arms trained police, who, when called for can be called in (if not on duty),then armed, and sent to the required position. Please note, that other than when these officers are deployed with fire-arms they do NOT carry arms as an everyday occurrence.
ReplyDeleteThis does for the most part work for us here. But then we have never had rule by gun.
I would like to believe that the UK police forces will stay mostly gun free, but hey! I don't have a crystal ball....
Best wishes
Jo South East Coast UK
I can't believe you posted this today. I was in the supermarket, tand there were employees blocking the frozen food aisle, in the center of the aisle were five or six Police Officers standing in a circle. Apparently, one of the cops dropped his or her gun on the ground (it didn't "just go off", and they were watching the gun, waiting for the boss to come out and open an internal affairs report. They all looked like Don Knotts, shaking in their boots and over caffieneated.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for gun safety, but this just looked laughable to me. They're all on the clock watching a gun with so much intensity it looked like they were trying to make it levitate, I suppose if it helps stop one person from being hurt or killed, it's worth our tax dollars at work.