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Comment by notdonspaulding | Hacker News Reader

With no clips to trade, I'm merely spectating at a tennis match, but I remain unconvinced that the UK response is in any way better.

In all 3 clips (your two, plus the parent's) what I see is that a person holding a knife is an immediate and real danger to anyone within 15 feet of them.

Also, if I'm seeing correctly, both assailants had already been pepper-sprayed, is that right?

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I don't know the numbers but it seems to me the relevant question is, in X number of incidents in the UK vs. the US, how many perpetrators die? How many cops die?

If the UK police are able to subdue these people without killing the perpetrator or getting killed themselves, on a per capita basis, I'd say the UK response is better.

Leaving aside the apples/oranges comparison of the greater latitude given to the individual's rights in the US vs. the UK (2nd and 4th amendments in particular), I'd more or less agree with this criteria being a good way to distinguish the overall value of the two approaches to dealing with armed civilian confrontations.

That being said, if the numbers you're looking for exist in an unbiased, non-doctored study, I'd be surprised. If they did, and they supported the thesis, you'd see them quoted in every article advocating gun control.

Yes, in the UK version the person poses a risk of very real harm to officers. People could die. Despite this, police manage to subdue him, and arrest him. They can do this because an officer didn't shoot him within six seconds of arriving at the scene.

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