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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

We need to have a set of cops who are clearly marked, wired with a body camera, and who don't carry weaponry. Put them in blaze orange or something so criminals can see them coming and run away. You should have to go through this period for some number of years until you get to carry a gun.

Most cops go their whole lives without firing their gun--adding an extra gun rarely makes a situation better. While TV and movies like to portray heroic feats of gunplay, in reality, 90+% of the bullets go errant in situations where a gun was actually useful and required.

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I don't think the gun is the issue here - I carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something.

Police in the US are generally seen as adversarial, while police in the UK are generally seen as mostly helpful. In my estimation, the problem in the US is one of culture. Police here are looking for a reason to charge you with a crime, not trying to keep you out of trouble. It's "us versus them" on both sides.

> I carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something.

And yet you wrote in another comment that had you been the son-in-law, you would've brought your rifle to go talk to the person at the car. Why? In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a car?

> In your scenario, you already called 911, what's the point of brandishing the weapon if you're not prepared to shoot someone for possibly stealing a car?

It's not unreasonable to expect that someone willing to steal a car might also be willing to harm you to do so.

In a country where gun ownership for private citizens is difficult in practice, that's somewhat unreasonable to expect.

Also, if someone feels like the expected penalties for stealing a car and wounding/killing someone are close enough that they should be prepared to kill someone while stealing the car if needed, that speaks to a failure of the justice system: either the penalty for causing physical harm should be much higher, or the penalty for stealing a car should be much lower.

The issue that the police in UK fire their guns a few orders of magnitude less might have something to do with it. It makes no sense to dive into statistics as to encounters and guilt and race and what not. Police in US is seen as adversial because they tend to shoot people and that's the core problem. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-police-sho...

Police in the US also get shot at magnitudes higher than the UK. Something something about everyone having guns.

For anyone who thinks this is a silly idea, this a pretty close description of the average UK police officer.

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