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Comment by t34543 | Hacker News Reader

Armed responders are human. Humans make mistakes. Drop guns aren’t unheard of when a bad officer decides to cover up a mistake.

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Why do they arm normal police officers and security guards? Why not leave the armed response to specialist officers with much higher levels of training and accountability?

Violent criminals don't break for tea time while everyone waits for the "armed response" people to show up. Cops and security guards are armed because they encounter situations where they have to defend themselves against someone who wants to kill them. If a criminal is pulling a gun out of his waistband, suggesting that the cop or security guard should have to be a defenseless sitting duck while screaming into the radio for "armed response" is an utterly silly proposition.

Are most criminals really carrying guns? It seems like a bad trade-off to arm everyone all the time just for the one in a billion case that a criminal is armed.

First of all, there are more ways than just guns for a criminal adversary to kill someone, including knives, hammers, baseball bats, pounding a person's head into the sidewalk using bare hands only, etc. Secondly, a cursory glance at crime statistics ought to dispossess you of the notion that criminals are only armed every "one in a billion" cases. Thirdly, if you really think this only happens "one in a billion" cases, why would you bother standing up an armed response team at all?

Police and security in the UK manage just fine without guns. I think arming the police means criminals feel the need to be armed in response.

The United States isn't the UK. That aside, considering the UK's recent surge in knife violence, I'm not sure your assertion that armed police cause criminals to arm themselves can be substantiated.

In my current state almost everyone has a weapon. My neighbor (legally) owns a fully automatic gun. I have had a gun pointed at me twice during two separate crimes when I lived in another state. That state has extremely harsh gun laws, one year minimum for every bullet in a illegal weapon.

Just last week there was a home invasion robbery and the mans guard dog was shot and killed in my current city.

Slightly more than one in a billion chance.

Guns can’t be taken out of citizens’ hands. Teach responsible use and double down.

They only make mistakes when the other party isn’t white.

Police murder plenty of white people.

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