US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3158

On April 16 2021 14:27 BlackJack wrote:
If anything this just proves my point. Because it actually does appear the kid was trying to ditch the gun and surrender instead of pull the gun and blow the cop away. Given that fact the cop obviously made the wrong decision to shoot the kid. But as I said it's literally a split second decision being made with hand-shaking adrenaline through his system. It's literally an impossible task but the cop failed the impossible task so off to the stockades with him.

On April 16 2021 05:49 BlackJack wrote:


That's also the policy in some jurisdictions in the US. Although it's typically for if there is some traffic violation like speeding or rolling through a stop sign and the perpetrator takes off. I don't think if they have a known fugitive with a warrant for their arrest that they just let them drive away.

Since you replied to this discussion I am curious on what you think is the appropriate punishment for the cop lady that shot Daunte Wright. Since 2 things I know about you are that you tend to believe that imprisoning people should not be for retribution and should instead be for rehabilitation and the betterment of society. Since cop lady clearly made a mistake and did not intend to kill that guy I don't know if there is much of an argument for "rehabilitation" as her risk for committing further crimes is virtually 0% if you bar her from ever owning or working with a gun. However, you also have strong views against use of force by police. The vast majority in this thread seem to think cop lady should go to jail, I think myself and JimmiC are the only "nays" so far.

On April 16 2021 07:15 farvacola wrote:

These are fine questions, I own two handguns and may pick up a long gun or two at some point as well. I own firearms for two primary reasons. The first is that shooting guns accurately is really fucking difficult, so difficult that the slow process of improvement can be very rewarding. I'm right on the edge of being good enough to compete with my range gun, so its very much a sporting thing that is directly tied to why I once thought my low Master's league Zerg cheese skills meant I should practice SC2 day and night :D

The second is that I have very strong views about gun control and those are strengthened and come from a place of more authority when I myself have competence with firearms. For instance, I know how hard it is to be accurate with a handgun such that I can say with certainty that 99% of people who own firearms for self-defense are fooling themselves. As the stats show, the most appreciable changes in circumstance that results from firearm ownership are increased risk of accidents, increased risk of suicide, and increased risk of assailants using one's firearms against them. This would be incredibly obvious to anyone who has spent much time at ranges, people can barely hit targets 5 and 10 yards in front of them with steel frame range handguns far more accurate than polymer guns like Glocks and M&P Shields. The self-defense arguments are laughable.

On April 16 2021 16:38 Biff The Understudy wrote:
I mean people do go to jail for unvoluntary manslaughter. You make a mistake with your car and roll over someone, you get in trouble. I fail to see how shooting someone in the face accidentally doesn’t qualify. “I’m sorry, wrong weapon, ooops” is not really good enough.

Also there are many reasons outside of vengeance why people go to jail, starting with deterrence and accountability. Maybe if cops got punished in cases like that, they would be a bit less trigger happy generally.

On April 16 2021 08:28 BlackJack wrote:
I'll start from scratch and reiterate my argument one more time since it still may not be clear:

Humans are not infallible and are prone to errors. If you work at McDonalds it probably doesn't matter if you mess up somebody's order very much. But if you are a Doctor that pushes a wrong medication, an engineer that designs a faulty bridge, an airline pilot that makes a bad mistake, sometimes your mistakes can kill people. It's even more true for police that are constantly put in the most dangerous situations in our society and who have:

1) Far less education and training than other professions
2) Far less time to think about their decisions
3) Far more panic flowing them them when having to make their decisions

I know for a fact that I could not operate under these conditions flawlessly. If anyone here thinks they can they are probably deluding themselves. So they are essentially set up to fail since humans are not infallible and mistakes are inevitable. It's simply a matter of time when a mistake is going to be made that ends somebody's life. So the question is what to do with someone who makes a mistake in their job that ends another person's life even though it's basically predestined that such a mistake will happen? Maybe just throw them away in jail like a sacrificial lamb so everyone else can feel good that justice is served? Like a culling of the bottom 0.1% of incompetence? Maybe, it's not a completely unreasonable idea and it would probably make some people "think twice" and possibly prevent the mistake from happening again in the future. Of course it may deter a lot of good and intelligent people from wanting to be police officers if they know they will be in dangerous situations and if they fuck up they will go to prison? That's my question.

On April 16 2021 21:43 farvacola wrote:

My experience as a handgun enthusiast has only strengthened my belief in a significantly stronger national gun control regime, one that implements mandatory background checks for all purchases, mandatory FFL supervision of all private sales, and perhaps measures like ownership limits on number of weapons and ammo.

As for justification of having non-sporting weapons in the first place, that's a much closer call. Take a look at the preceding conversation regarding police, for example; can it truly be said that deferring to the authority of LEOs qualifies as a good reason to take away rights to weapons like G17s? Despite there being practical issues with use of those weapons for self-defense, I don't think its possible to assert in good faith that black folks and minorities can rely on LEOs as the sole parties capable of using force.

On April 16 2021 14:27 BlackJack wrote:
If anything this just proves my point. Because it actually does appear the kid was trying to ditch the gun and surrender instead of pull the gun and blow the cop away. Given that fact the cop obviously made the wrong decision to shoot the kid. But as I said it's literally a split second decision being made with hand-shaking adrenaline through his system. It's literally an impossible task but the cop failed the impossible task so off to the stockades with him.

On April 16 2021 23:55 JimmiC wrote:

I'm not sure at the end. I think it is just counter intuitive. People needing guns to keep the police inline just simply does not work. The police will always have more, bigger and so on, not to mention the training, numbers and organization. And you can't ask the police to not have guns as long as so much of the population does. If you were to de-arm the population you could, and you would also take away the excuse/reason why so many die by police.

Not to mention you would deeply cut the mass shootings like the one Z2C just posted about and seem to happen multiple times a week as well as all other forms of gun violence.

There is zero logical reasons to have a populous with easy access to tools designed to kill people as easily as possible. Hunting rifles and so on, sure with regulation there are reasons why that make sense. Hand guns and assault rifles all the reasons are emotional, none are analytical.

On April 17 2021 00:12 KwarK wrote:

This isn’t an example of accidentally shooting someone. The cop deliberately shot him. The argument “sure, he decided the best option was to kill a child but it was a hard situation” doesn’t work for me. I can say with absolute confidence as a father that if I were a cop I wouldn’t kill children. This isn’t an impossible task, this is an easy task. Not killing children is super easy. Lots of cops go their whole careers never killing children.

On April 16 2021 20:35 EnDeR_ wrote:


Thank you for stating this more clearly. Let's go step by step:

1. Training

- Doctors can take up to 15 years of training (depending on specialty) before they start cutting into people
- Engineers require 4 years of training, but you don't design planes as your entry level job, normally you will have done a PhD, so add on 5 more years to a total of about 9 years of training.
- Airline pilots usually require about 18 months training

Police officer training takes between 13 to 19 weeks (depending on agency) and typically only require a high school diploma (according to golawenforcement.com)

It's kind of crazy that we require a young doctor train for 10-15 years before they're allowed to perform surgeries, but we're cool with giving police officers guns after 3 months of training.

2. Performing flawlessly under pressure

I agree with you, someone who's had 3 months of training and watched lots of cop movies is poorly equipped to deal with life and death situations and split-second, panicky decisions. I know that making mistakes under pressure is extremely likely and I don't expect cops to perform better or worse than the general population, i.e. mistakes will happen. This is an indictment on the system that produces such outcomes, not individual cops.

The way to fix this is to do what we require doctors to do, i.e. train for a period of years (not weeks, years), do skills tests, practice on dummies; pass multiple, regulated exams and eventually go out on the streets and do their job.

3. What to do when mistakes happen?
What every other profession does: investigate the incident, adjust the risk assessment, come up with a plan addressing the accident so the likelihood of it happening again is minimised, retrain the workforce so the mistake does not happen again; re-assess in a predetermined amount of time if the plan is working and implement new changes if it's not.

4. Should we sacrify cops that made mistakes so everyone can feel good?
No. At an individual level, examine if the cop followed protocol and their training; if the police officer followed protocol and the mistake could not have been prevented by their training, I don't think the cop should be facing individual consequences, shit does indeed happen sometimes. If the officer committed multiple unforced errors or ignored protocol, they should be hit with the full weight of the law, like all citizens.

My conclusion:
The problem is systemic, not individual. You don't fix policing in the US by jailing cops. You have to address the root of the problem.

On April 17 2021 05:00 BlackJack wrote:


This is a very bad argument. "Lots of cops go their whole careers never killing children." This literally means nothing. Yes, most cops will never be in the rare and dire situation of responding to a call of gunshots and then chasing an adolescent down an alleyway before the adolescent whips out a gun and having to decide if he is whipping out the gun to shoot you or to throw it away. Comparing the behavior of people in rare and dire situations to people that are never in those situations as some kind of moral indictment is just ridiculous. It's like condemning shipwreck survivors that resorted to cannibalism because "Lots of people go their whole lives without resorting to cannibalism."

"I can say with absolute confidence as a father that if I were a cop I wouldn't kill children."

Really? Just a period at the end of that sentence, eh? So even in the hypothetical situation of instead of the kid ditching the gun he turns around and starts blasting you you would just eat those bullets instead of "killing a child." Your widow would be so proud. It's also really easy to say when you aren't a cop and know that you would never be in that situation.

On April 17 2021 05:14 KwarK wrote:

You're acting like it's unimaginable that someone would never kill a child. It's really not, that's just a you thing. That just speaks to your lack of character, don't project that shit on me. My widow would be proud.