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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

> Paramedics were called and injected McClain with ketamine, but they incorrectly estimated his weight, giving him more than 1.5 times the dose he should have received. He got 500 milligrams because they thought he weighed 220 pounds, but he was only 140 pounds and should have received 315 milligrams.

That’s 7.9mg/kg, not nearly enough ketamine to cause cardiac arrest in someone that size. LD50 in humans is at least 5-10x that.

Those officers that had him in a chokehold killed him, and are trying to scapegoat the EMS.

There is a name for this behavior: a lynching.

Erica Marrero, Kyle Dittrich, Jason Rosenblatt, and Jaron Jones, white cops, murdered an unarmed black man.

The entirety of the consequences they suffered? They lost their jobs. The police who declined to enforce the law against them are complicit.

Abolish the police.

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> There is a name for this behavior: a lynching.

For those who didn't know, the police culture becomes quite a bit more sickening when you find out that one of the arresting officers, along with 2 other colleagues, posed grinning in a photo mocking their brutality against McClain just days after he died! Across the street from a memorial to him, no less.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/Elijah-McClain-aurora-...

I hope I'm not not regurgitating false information (I'm finding it difficult to find a reputable primary source, since there's a lot of clearly pro-ketamine sites), but I was under the impression that one of the reasons that ketamine has been used both in people and in applications like as a horse tranquilizer is that it's safe dosage range is considerably wide, presenting some margin of error over similar drugs.

Obviously it's more than he should have been given (and tbh am pretty uncomfortable with it being given here at all), but my decidedly non-expert opinion (and the official autopsy statement that the "ketamine in McClain's blood was at 'tolerable levels' ") is that there's all sorts of red flags about this situation.

> Abolish the police.

Sounds cool. I have had some bad experiences with cops.

Suppose someone breaks into your house because of your skin color or political leanings and there are no police. What course of action do you recommend? Spoiler alert. You are also heavily armed.

If someone breaks into your home what do you think police response time will be? 20 minutes? 40 minutes? An attacker can do a lot of damage and run away in that allotted time. The police will just be there to fill out the paper work after the fact.

Whatever course of action you take, do something in addition to or besides call the police.

So it’s not about abolishing the police. “Defund the police”, which I agree is a bad term, is about focusing some of those funds on social programs and only calling the police for true criminal causes.

I am definitely not a conservative on most issues, but I am a strong believer in the right to have a gun in your own home and the various “Castle” laws. If you break into my house or try to take my car while I am in it, I am going to assume you mean me harm. Shoot first then call the cops.

Yes I know the statistics about a gun in the home is more likely to be used accidentally or on purpose (suicide/homicide/accidental shooting) against someone in the home.

> I am a strong believer in the right to have a gun in your own home and the various “Castle” laws. If you break into my house or try to take my car while I am in it, I am going to assume you mean me harm. Shoot first then call the cops.

Do you know how absurd this sounds to people in actual civilized countries? Kind of amazing how many of you Americans are living in some Wild West fantasy.

I would much rather live in a world with fewer guns. But, with the proliferation of guns in the US, what is the left suppose to do when confronted by an armed assailant in their own home? We are not going to get rid of guns in America. What other protection do you have?

4 in 10 Americans live in a gun owning household. That number is probably greater in the south.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/22/facts-about...

It’s probably even greater for someone willing to break into your house.

Guns in the US is a “gravity problem” no matter how much you complain about them, they aren’t going anywhere.

We live in a country where the far right is arming up and when the left wants to “peacefully protest” and exercise their first amendment (not saying it always ends up being peaceful), the far right is “exercising their 2nd amendment”.

Which side do you think is going to come out ahead?

Othering and belittling pours gas on an already polarized topic. If you can't talk about the issue without going there, then you aren't equipped to change minds. If the [keyboard] is mightier than the [gun], then one must show even more restraint in its employ.

Do the police in your country have guns? (Trick question. The police in every country, even Japan, have guns.)

If an armed attacker breaks into your home, would not the first thing you do be to call someone to bring a gun over quickly to protect you and bring an end to the risk?

This is no different than keeping a fire extinguisher in your home versus relying 100% on the fire brigade to protect you.

Firearms are safety equipment, nothing more. The fact that you equate a common tool, used in every civilization in the world, to “some wild west fantasy”, says more about the baggage you attach to it than that which exists in reality.

> Do the police in your country have guns? (Trick question. The police in every country, even Japan, have guns.)

No, please do your research

In the case of the US, if the criminals have guns and the law abiding people don’t, where does that leave the law abiding people?

It’s just like what happened when Reagan was the Governor of California. As soon as Black people started peacefully “exercising their second amendment rights”, both Reagan and the NRA were all for gun control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

Even now while the liberals are fighting for more gun control, conservatives are arming up - especially in the South.

The far right is getting armed while the far left is talking about “give peace a chance”.

I mean there is quite a number of countries where regular police are prohibited from carrying firearms, or at least don't carry them anywhere so casually.

I bet those same countries don’t have the love affair with gun ownership and easy access as the US.

That still comes back to the same question - if the criminals have guns and neither law abiding citizens or the police have guns, where does that leave the law abiding citizens?

> Firearms are safety equipment, nothing more.

The first half is at least arguably true, the second half is...not.

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