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.
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%.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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.
and yes, I do own 4 handguns, 2 shotguns (for trap), and .30-06 for moose hunting, and have a concealed carry permit.
This is false.
One has to pass a federal background check and some states have additional checks and restrictions as well.
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...
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?
Let's lower the stakes with what we do control - the police carrying 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.