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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

How else does a victim of domestic violence get a restraining order enforced or recover possessions from an unsafe home? I'm all for better funding for social work and food banks, but at some point, it seems hard to avoid armed officials providing safety. We just need them to actually do that.

The alternatives in those particular situations (the neighborhood makes it work) looks a lot like vigilantism to me, which doesn't sound net safer. There's no particular requirement of equality or due process there, not even notionally.

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Do the police currently actually do any of those things for most victims of domestic violence?

Police can’t enforce restraining orders when the victim doesn’t have $10K’s to hire a lawyer to go to court and get the order in the first place. Getting such orders is hit or miss from what I’ve heard, even if you have the cash.

Instead, sand an unarmed social worker to recover the items. If the abuser escalates, or the social worker witnesses abuse, send the police to arrest the abuser and prosecute them for assault. Now, the prosecution has an unbiased witness to help them win their case.

90% of the time, the abuser won’t escalate, and the police won’t need to drive out. Repeat the exercise for all routine police actions. (Heck, we even have armed police enforcing playground rules in many schools.)

Having done that, and having eliminated 90% of the police’s workload, cut their budget 80%, and hold what’s left of the department to a much higher standard.

I am doubtful that one or two social workers removing a child from a risk-filled home will be a generally safe procedure. At a minimum, they will need to protect themselves, and at some point we're talking about an armed, possibly violent (the abuser might see it as legal kidnapping) officer of the law.

A 10% rate of violence is huge, especially when irrationality and domestic abuse is involved. If armed police are reduced dramatically in number, will they be able to respond in ten minutes?

What if you have armed officers there but we let the social workers make the decisions?

> it seems hard to avoid armed officials

Why on earth do they need to be armed? There is zero reason for a local police officer be carrying firearms. It's insane. Dis-arming all but specialist firearms officers should be the first step.

I find it really frightening when I visit the US and all the police are armed to the teeth.

I, much like I imagine you to be, grew up in a country where guns are restricted and rare.

In the US, that's not the case and any attempts to restrict gun ownership meets huge political hurdles. Even if those restrictions are what other countries would deem to be common sense, e.g. Switzerland or New Zealand.

I think it's all kinds of crazy to sell guns in supermarkets with next to no checks on who owns them, but I get why police would want to have guns in the US.

Maybe criminals carry and use guns because they know the police have guns?

Let's lower the stakes with what we do control - the police carrying guns.

People carry guns either to impose their will on other people or to avoid having other people's will imposed on themselves. Neither of those motivations go away if the police stop carrying guns.

If the police aren't threatening to shoot you then you don't need a gun to shoot back.

As if the police were the only such threat, and the crime that police are supposed to protect us from isn't significant. Without police, I'd be more inclined to carry and I don't think that would be unusual.

This assumes criminals only carry guns to defend themselves against police shootings, which is obviously and amusingly incorrect.

> Maybe criminals carry and use guns because they know the police have guns?

What? Of course criminals carry guns to threaten and harm other citizens, including other criminals. They aren’t principally concerned with defending themselves against the police.

> sell guns in supermarkets with next to no checks on who owns them

Yea, A, you might be able to get a single shot hunting rifle in a walmart in a rural part of the USA... but it may not work to begin with because it's a cheap piece of crap. You're really not going to buy some eggs, milk, loaf of bread and an AK in the same store in the USA. Stop believing bullshit.

B, Neil Steinberg for the Chicago Sun Times believed the same thing of "no checks". He got denied a gun because he got picked up for beating his wife a few years prior. Then blamed the store for the deny. Which, a gun store clerk/owner is in full legal right to deny service to anyone, even if the customer qualifies. The DEA encourages them to deny and report people if they feel the customer is purchasing a gun for malice... except, Neil beat his wife after drinking too much booze. So the DEA denied him on that one. Lots of people think they can get easily approved for a gun and realize real quick they can't. I've been in gun stores plenty of times to see people apply, wait and get denied.

Just like in countries where guns are illegal, you can buy guns on the black market.

If you actually know cops in the USA, they generally like those with conceal permit licenses. It means they're not prior felons, they don't want to lose their gun or the license, thus don't want to do anything stupid. There are exceptions, just like with anything else. "Sovereign citizens" are a special class of complete stupid. But a majority of legal gun owners have zero interest in doing anything stupid. I already know all of this is unpopular opinion and I'll get lambasted by non-gun owners. Whatever.

You can actually get some pretty quality handguns in some Walmarts, and Fred Meyer for that matter. And yes, background checks are required for most purchases. But not for private purchases or gun shows in most states. Doesn't need to be the "black market".

and yes, I do own 4 handguns, 2 shotguns (for trap), and .30-06 for moose hunting, and have a concealed carry permit.

As a fellow gun owner, you’re making a lot of big claims but only supplying anecdotes.

> you might be able to get a single shot hunting rifle in a walmart in a rural part of the USA... but it may not work to begin with because it's a cheap piece of crap.

My nearest grocery store in a major city is bi-mart and I can pick up some very nice semi-auto pistols along with my local dairy’s milk

> If you actually know cops in the USA, they generally like those with conceal permit licenses.

The cops I know generally hate conceal permits because it gives holders an inflated sense of their abilities on how and when to use the weapon in a high stress situation

Again, everyone’s got different anecdotes but they don’t make compelling arguments.

As far as I can tell, there's checks on criminal history, but not much else, but I'm happy to be corrected. Furthermore, those checks are dependent on state record being populated to a federal database and there's a suggestion that sometimes things gets missed. Maybe it's inevitable given the structure of policing in America.

You don't have to look far to find massacres committed by legal gun owners in the US: El Paso (2019), Las Vegas (2017), the list goes on. If someone can legally buy a gun and then do this, the checks are insufficient. Contrastingly, there hasn't been a similar event in the UK in my lifetime.

I'm not suggesting all gun owners are lunatics, bear ill will to others or do anything unsafe with their guns. Nonetheless, if someone can legally buy a gun and do anything with it, the arms race with police is inevitable.

“ sell guns in supermarkets with next to no checks on who owns them,“

This is false.

One has to pass a federal background check and some states have additional checks and restrictions as well.

They didnt say no checks, they said next to no checks. There actually are relatively few federal restrictions - effectively anyone who is not a criminal can purchase (most) guns legally [0] (some states are more strict, though). Compared to virtually every other country in the world, that is "next to no checks". Many states have no background checks at all for private sales [1], though that wouldn't apply to purchases from a supermarket.

For example, contrast the UK, which in addition to outright banning most firearms such as handguns, requires a "good reason" to issue a firearms permit - and things like self defense are not considered acceptable reasons [2].

[0] https://injury.findlaw.com/product-liability/gun-laws.html

[1] https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/private-g...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_the_Uni...

1. Sells guns in supermarkets. I searched for "Walmart guns" and got picture of guns on shelves on the Walmart website. I also found articles about panic buying ammunition during lockdown, and calls to reduce the range of guns on sale after various massacres.

2. Next to no checks. I looked at comments challenging my assertion and did a quick bit of research, finding articles such as [1] which suggests there are minimal checks that consume very little time. As far as I can tell, the checks are based on whether you've previously committed crimes which ignores whether you're likely to commit a crime with a gun in the future (such as the 2019 El Paso shooting). More alarmingly, I found suggestions that these checks are optional and performed at the discretion of the seller, although I didn't pursue it further to corroborate the claims.

What about the quote was false?

[1] https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/gun-control-facts

Probably because of the relatively easy access to guns in the US. Statistically you have a 0.00029% chance of being shot and killed by a police officer in a given year, and that rate falls to 0.00001% if you aren’t armed and it probably falls another two orders of magnitude if you obey the law. The likelihood that you will be killed in a car accident in the US in a given year is 0.01% or 1000-100000 times more likely than being shot/killed by police. Two things can be true: the American system is imperfect and the American system is still relatively safe.

> Statistically you have a 0.00029% chance of being shot and killed by a police officer in a given year ... the American system is still relatively safe

What do you think is the chance of being killed by shot and killed by police in countries that don't arm their police like they're in a war zone, like the UK?

A lot lower, at around 0.000005%.

Yes, it’s a difficult political problem in the US. Americans aren’t willing to sacrifice thousands of additional homicide victims annually (by disarming the police) in order to save a handful when the latter can be saved by better vetting, training, accountability, etc. We’re trying to minimize for loss of life, not just for loss of life by police.

> We’re trying to minimize for loss of life, not just for loss of life by police.

Do you realise that the general homicide rate in the UK is also lower, at 1.2 per 100,000, compared to 4.96 in the US?

I am aware. Your mistake is thinking that disparity is caused by a disarmed police force.

I didn't say all officers need weapons. But domestic violence calls are notably dangerous, with high tempers and intoxicated people involved. Irrational violence should be anticipated in those situations.

Officers writing parking violations might not need firearms, but traffic stops are also dangerous as individuals with outstanding warrants might be desperate to avoid arrest. Also, intoxicated people are famously bad drivers.

I just don't get this. Bringing a gun to a domestic dispute or a simple traffic stop sounds like lunacy and a lethal escalation to me.

This is all things I have been told by people I personally believe. I'm open to statistical evidence either way on the particulars.

I saw this recently in a nearby domestic dispute in Northern Ireland, which still routinely arms constables.

The antagonist had a kitchen knife and the first responding policewoman drew her pistol. But what now? She had gone straight to the lethal option and had no other recourse. The antagonist became more aggressive to defend himself.

Her colleague thankfully disarmed him with use of a truncheon.

> She had gone straight to the lethal option and had no other recourse.

Not true. I presume that PSNI, like any law enforcement agency in the U.S., operates with some form of a use of force continuum that ranges from officer presence to deadly force. One of the most important aspects of that continuum that is taught to officers is that you can move up and down the continuum as the situation dictates. If you draw your sidearm you are not obligated to remain at that level of the use of force continuum. You should continue to make every effort to gain control of the situation, and deescalate.

At the same time, you are not obligated to use a lower level of force than that which you are facing, and a kitchen knife is a deadly weapon. It's very much a training issue as much as anything to educate officers in deescalation techniques, less-lethal weapons and control techniques, and scene management to minimize casualties. In the situation you describe though, it was absolutely appropriate for her to draw her sidearm, while still doing everything in her power to regain control of the situation so that she would not need to use it.

> Not true. I presume that PSNI, like any law enforcement agency in the U.S., operates with some form of a use of force continuum that ranges from officer presence to deadly force.

That's not what the person you're replying to means.

They mean despite what other options the officer had available to them, they had already reached for the lethal option (drawing their pistol) and from there had nowhere to go but threatening to kill or actually killing.

As soon as an officer turns up with a firearm, you have irreversibly escalated the situation to out-of-control insanity.

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