Police lives are put at risk by a country awash in guns

[sharedvalues]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-off-duty-officer-shot-downtown-20180213-story.html

Chicago police commander gunned down pursuing a suspect

Cmdr. Paul Bauer, 53, was shot to death at the Thompson Center after chasing a man fleeing from tactical officers who tried to stop him, police officials said. Bauer confronted the man, who opened fire as the two struggled, killing the 31-year department veteran, according to police officials and other sources. Bauer had been in the area after attending “active shooter” training, which prepares officers for mass shootings. He also had a meeting with aldermen scheduled for later in the day.

Officers recovered a gun from the man, who was wearing a protective vest, according to a source.

Bauer, a married father of a 13-year-old daughter, is the first Chicago cop shot and killed since 2011, and he is the highest-ranking officer killed in decades.

The incident briefly pitched the heart of Chicago’s business and governmental district into turmoil

Some may wish to talk about the perpetrator's criminal history. Perhaps that is an issue that needs to be examined.

But an equal or bigger issue is that the perpetrator had a gun. Why did he have a gun? Because our country is awash in guns. For three main reasons:
- Gun manufacturers make money from guns and have bought the GOP.
- GOP politicians and propagandists have exploited guns to divide America to get votes for their pro-billionaire polities.
- Individual gun owners put their own hobby above people in America's cities getting killed by guns.




Here is the man killed.



RIP.

[efhmc]

1. There is a god awful waste of humans in this country

because we will not address our gun scourge.

[NorenForSenateNY]

2. Tragic but keep an open mind

Very very tragic..I do however think we have the right to defend ourselves against criminals and public nutjobs with guns. I am a victim of gun violence being held up at gunpoint. I just think it's not something to be all or none with ownership and carry laws.

[sharedvalues]

3. Yes! If the policeman only had a gun he would not have died!

Oh, right. He did have a gun. He's a police officer. His fellow police officers had guns too.

Guess what? More guns means more deaths. You'll never 'stop' the guy who shoots first.

We want to reduce gun violence in America? Reduce guns, full stop.

[fleabiscuit]

4. Yes.

Countries with larger percentages of guns in citizens possession have more gun deaths. Not only do statistics show it, it just seems obvious to thinking people.

[demosincebirth]

6. thank the evil NRA and the weak thinking of their followers.

[EX500rider]

22. Actually it looks more like there is no correlation:

[fleabiscuit]

23. Perhaps we should strive to compare the US to other modern economies.

America’s unique gun violence problem, explained in 17 maps and charts VOX
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts

[EX500rider]

24. Since the entire US homicide rate by any means is under 5..

...I assume your chart includes suicides, which is a different problem and not really related to gun violence since countries with few guns like Japan and Korea have a higher rate then the US.

[fleabiscuit]

25. LOL

[fleabiscuit]

26. Perhaps you would like a state by state view?

Just scroll the story...

[gejohnston]

30. which includes suicide by firearm,

60 percent of all gun deaths are suicide, and that is only about half of all suicides. The dark side of this bullshit is that it is also saying "we don't care that they died, only that they were shot."

[fleabiscuit]

31. Ya, that's not gun violence at all.

[gejohnston]

32. so the other half is rope violence?

Here is the problem. Policies based on emotion, logical fallacies and disinformation are are always a bad idea.

[fleabiscuit]

33. I think I"m mostly agreeing with you.

Suicide is a terrible thing. IMHO there is no denying easy access to guns helps facilitate and exacerbate the action. It is a violent action that is most likely to succeed. It's right in the literature.

[EX500rider]

34. Again, homicide and suicide are different things that will require different solutions.

The homicide rate by firearms is around 3.6 per 100,000

[fleabiscuit]

35. Go with what makes you feel better. nt

[EX500rider]

41. Inflate the numbers if it makes you feel better.

[EX500rider]

42. If jumping off a bridge isn't bridge violence and hanging yourself isn't rope violence..

....then shooting yourself isn't gun violence.

[fleabiscuit]

43. WHO, nt

[sharedvalues]

37. Love this chart. The NYT did it too.

Australia and Canada put the lie to NRA stats. Fewer guns, fewer deaths. See the chart.

[Canoe52]

11. +1 nt

[Eliot Rosewater]

16. If all guns were locked away in militia buildings as the Constitution suggests

most cops could go around without guns let alone citizens.

[Marengo]

17. If this was the original intent, can you provide examples where it was enforced?

[friendly_iconoclast]

18. Got an Encylopedia Britanica handy? You'll have finished reading it before you get an answer...

In that posters' defense, that meme isn't *quite* as dimwitted as the persistent calls for
mandatory insurance for gun ownership...

[oneshooter]

36. Would you please show me what passage of the Constitution that is in? n/t

[sharedvalues]

38. Yup. As they do in other countries.

[friendly_iconoclast]

45. Which countries would that be?

[friendly_iconoclast]

46. As typical with that one, no answer when challenged...

[marble falls]

20. I was held at gun point. My though wasn't 'why don't I have a pistol', but 'how did the 16yr old...

gunman get one?'

[demosincebirth]

5. Shouldn't police officers be on the forefront of gun control - and why aren't they?

[efhmc]

7. They often are but are not listen to.

[SeattleVet]

9. The rank-and-file tend to be very pro-2nd Amendment ...

and less restrictive access to firearms. The brass (more political appointees) tends to be in favor of more restrictions.

Been that way for as long as I can remember.

[Kablooie]

8. A small price to pay so a subset of Americans can have fun shooting up cans and signs.

Their fun is more important than the lives of police or children.

[Hangingon]

15. The shooter was a 4 time felon who illegally had a gun.

This fact has been ignored in the rush to demean legal gun owners. No way to get votes.

[friendly_iconoclast]

19. If you familiarize yourself with the OP's, ahem, "body of work", a question naturally arises:

Is it a case of:



Or merely:

[NCDem777]

10. But they vote for the more gunnnnz people

because the GOP promises to make those brown folks shut up about police accountability and they can go back to planting guns on anyone they want to make sport of.

They deserve to be shot at.

[sharedvalues]

13. No. Bad apples need to be punished

But on the whole most police are trying to do the right thing.

We need to take military arms away from police departments,

Make sure to hold individual cops responsible for wrongdoing (need independent investigations and prosecution of police misconduct),

And then support the police as a whole so they can return to “protect and serve”.



We will help nothing if we hate all police, and we will further divide the country.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

14. There's a few things I can agree with. n/t

[NCDem777]

21. Nope. They brought this on themselves

Police consistently vote for gun nut Republicans. They elect union officials who consistently endorse them. Even as Republicans make it easier and easier for psychos to get arsenals and wink wink nudge nudge at the cop killing Sovereign Citizens.

Why? Because they got their little fee fees hurt by POC saying they shouldn't be allowed to investigate themselves.

They brought this on themselves.

[SunSeeker]

12. K & R

[DetlefK]

27. Meanwhile they hold gun-raffles to push more guns into the population.

[sharedvalues]

39. Some of them do. Many police are good people.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

28. Not just police lives.

High school students. Toddlers. Lots of random people.

In fact, without bothering to do any research, I suspect that police make up the smallest demographic of those killed by guns.

But police understand, or at least they had fucking well better understand, that the job they've undertaken has risks.

I don't think going to school should have similar risks. I really don't.

[no_hypocrisy]

29. Could this fact be one of the reasons why the federal government is pushing municipalities

to purchase retired military hardware like tanks, etc.? Is this the only way to "out-gun" criminals?

[sharedvalues]

40. Yes that's exactly the justification given. If we banned handguns and semi-autos we could

argue for reduced militarization too.



An example of this stupid argument
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-1214-sunday-police-militarization-20141214-story.html

[friendly_iconoclast]

44. Ahem: Australian cops upgun: "(Victoria) Police set sights on faster reloading guns"

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x314775

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-04-30/police-set-sights-on-faster-reloading-guns/416062?site=gippsland

Police set sights on faster reloading guns

The Police Superintendent in East Gippsland says new semi-automatic pistols will enable police officers to better defend themselves in a shoot-out.

The Victorian Government has awarded a $7 million contract to replace police revolvers with semi-automatic pistols.

The police union had previously claimed an officer in Melbourne was shot in the leg while reloading a revolver during a shoot-out in 2008.

Superintendent Geoff Newby says the new semi-automatic pistols will improve police safety when they arrive later this year.

"Well they'll have 15 shots before they need to reload as opposed to previously they would've had to have taken some form of reload action after six shots and of course during that time we're trained to do that at reasonable speed, under pressure that can take a little while and put you at risk, so from a safety aspect we're very pleased that we've got that option," he said....

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-police-switches-to-semiautomatic-weapons-20100429-tt44.html

Victoria Police officers will no longer carry revolvers as it switches to rapid-firing semi-automatic weapons.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe this morning revealed police would be rearmed with .40 calibre Smith & Wesson M & P (military and police) semi-automatic pistols...

...South Australian Police have been using Smith & Wesson semi-automatics since last year.

The reader will note that this happened fourteen years after the Australian gun confiscations oft touted
by the OP. Which raises a couple of questions for me:

1. Does this mean that the gun buyback didn't actually work?

2. And if that buyback did work as claimed, does it mean that cops will always want the newest and shiniest thing
that goes bang, the opinions of would-be social engineers notwithstanding?

[yagotme]

47. Hmmm,

"The police union had previously claimed an officer in Melbourne was shot in the leg while reloading a revolver during a shoot-out in 2008."

That's a neat trick. Wonder how he managed to do that? And you're going to give the same guys semi autos????

[Always Right]

48. Your proof that we need more gun control is proof that gun control doesn't work.

I feel terrible for this officer and his family but to blame guns for the action of a criminal, one who by definition doesn't follow laws and was already banned from having a gun... well your blame seems misplaced.

If gun control worked, this could never have happened because Chicago has just about the strictest gun control laws of anywhere in the country yet this still happened and a criminal had a gun.

Gun control won't ever work because criminals don't follow laws, that is why they are criminals.

[sharedvalues]

49. Fewer guns, fewer deaths.

If you don’t believe the mountains of data showing fewer guns means fewer deaths, you may have GOP/NRA Propaganda Syndrome.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

50. A label isn't an argument n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

51. ...nor is rote recitation of simplistic platitudes and appeals to emotion

[sharedvalues]

54. Proof here. NRA afraid of data. That's why they banned govt from collecting it.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1172206371

[sharedvalues]

55. Proof here. NRA afraid of data; they know it will show gun control works.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1172206371

[friendly_iconoclast]

56. You need to tap the base of the turntable a few times, the record keeps skipping...

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

Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction.[1] Sometimes, this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to its not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam).[2] In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.[3]

This fallacy is sometimes used as a form of rhetoric by politicians, or during a debate as a filibuster. In its extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing.[1] Modern politics contains many examples of proofs by assertion. This practice can be observed in the use of political slogans, and the distribution of "talking points", which are collections of short phrases that are issued to members of modern political parties for recitation to achieve maximum message repetition. The technique is also sometimes used in advertising.[4]

[sharedvalues]

58. I'll let that comprehensive study speak for itself. n/m

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

57. A lie isn't an argument

There is no "ban". There is a restriction on ADVOCACY.
See page #245 of PUBLIC LAW 104–208 of 30 SEPTEMBER 1996:
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/pdf/PLAW-104publ208.pdf

Provided
, That in addition to amounts provided
herein, up to $48,400,000 shall be available from amounts available
under section 241 of the Public Health Service Act, to carry out
the National Center for Health Statistics surveys:
Provided further
,
That none of the funds made available for injury prevention and
control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may
be used to advocate or promote gun control:

Bold emphasis is mine.

Calling that a ban on research is a lie. You didn't invent the lie but here is link a to the law.

[sharedvalues]

59. I'll let that comprehensive study speak for itself abt effects of NRA fed funding ban. n/m

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

60. You keep up talking about bans

An AWB, a CDC research ban:
Your study: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/2/17050610/guns-shootings-studies-rand-charts-maps
* shows there's no evidence that anything you suggest will affect mass shootings

As far as the CDC research ban that doesn't exist, I quoted and linked to the law.

BTW: running from truth isn't an argument either.

[sharedvalues]

53. Proof that NRA/GOP is afraid of data; they know gun control works

That's why they've banned the govt from collecting data. Because the NRA is afraid what it will show:
"Fewer guns, fewer deaths"

Here's the proof.
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1172206371

[Always Right]

61. Citation appreciated

I appreciate you showing where you got your "evidence from.

However it doesn't actually show what you seem to think it shows.

The RAND CORPORATION didn't do a study or collect any facts of their own, instead it reviewed studies done by other groups.

From the link you sent...

"The studies that have been done often reach opposite conclusions to each other"

"RAND concluded that, first and foremost, far more research is necessary."

"its review does seem to point in a direction" ... "supports the idea that more guns lead to more gun deaths."

So basically a non-partisan group look at studies by other groups and came to the conclusion that the research is inconclusive and that more research is needed but the results point in a direction. Hardly conclusive proof of anything.

For all we know, 95 gun control groups did studies that showed gun control works and 5 gun rights groups did studies and showed that it doesn't work. Would it be proper to conclude that gun control is 95% effective? I don't think so.

What your link showed is that you can do a study to prove what ever you want to prove.

That is why the NRA has opposed using taxpayer money to fund the CDC because they want to call gun violence a disease and government groups only really want to prove is that that group needs more money to research the problem.

I would support any neutral outcome independent research, but the CDC certainly is not neutral or outcome independent and should not be funded with taxpayer money.

When a side with an agenda does research, you wind up with bogus "facts" like the number of school shootings because they include things which are not school shootings but count them as such.

The number of school shootings most often cited comes from Every Town for Gun Safety. The problem with their numbers is that when I think of a school shooting, I think that a crazy person goes on a shooting spree randomly killing people but their numbers include anytime a gun goes off on or near a school regardless of the circumstances. Recently it was pointed out that the list of school shootings included school shooting on January 3, 2018 at East Olive Elementary in St. Johns, Michigan where a man committed suicide in parking lot with nobody else injured. However it turns out that the school had shut down shut down more than six months earlier and was no longer a school but a vacant building. They have since deleted that one but there are plenty more examples of bogus school shootings.

For example, their list of school shootings includes an event on January 10, 2018 at Grayson College in Denison, Texas where the instructor at the at Criminal Justice Center was demonstrating a firearm simulator and when the instructor was removing their live weapon to be substituted with the training weapon, accidentally fired a shot. Nobody was injured. So what it was a school, albeit one that specifically required firearms, and an accident with no injuries, it remains on the list of "school shootings" just to puff up the statistics.

There are plenty of more examples of the group doing that so you can see why I don't put any faith in what amounts to a study done of other studies.

[sharedvalues]

62. Stop misrepresenting. RAND study shows GOP blocks fed research on guns. read my cite. nm

[Always Right]

63. You need to work on your reading comprehension

I didn't represent anything. I pointed out that the RAND study was just a survey of other studies, for which we don't know the research methods. Basically garbage in, garbage out and that the RAND study said that they other studies tended to point in a direction but more research was needed.

As for what the GOP did, I never said anything about that. Rather, I correctly pointed out that the federal research blocked was by the CDC who wants to research Gun violence as a disease and that there conclusions have already been determined so now they are looking for favorable data to back it up.

I will say again who is misrepresenting facts on school shootings, Every Town for School Safety, that is who.

Here are more "school shootings" on their list:

On February 5, 2018, a third-grader at Harmony Learning Center in Maplewood, Minnesota pressed the trigger on a school liaison officer's gun firing a shot into the ground. Despite it being an accident by a police officer with no injuries, that was counted as a school shooting.

On January 10, 2018 at San Bernadino, California, a gunshot from off campus one of the school buildings and nobody was hurt. Seems that unrelated events off campus are also being counted as school shootings if a school is hit.

On Feb. 5, 2018 at Oxon Hill High School in Hill, Maryland a student was robbed after school in the parking lot. During the robbery the student got shot but because it was in the school parking lot that was counted as a school shooting. While certainly something I'd like to have prevented, I certainly wouldn't have counted a robbery not during school hours as a school shooting.

So tell me again how I'm misrepresenting things.

[Puha Ekapi_2]

52. Helen?

Is that you?