More police that need firearms training: Woman Shot in her pajamas by deputy

[rDigital]

Last edited Tue Aug 28, 2012, 08:56 PM - Edit history (1)

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/family-navy-vet-shot-startled-deputy-seeks-answers-193729306.html

Jennifer Orey, 36, was shot Sunday in a surprise encounter with two sheriff's deputies who were searching for a man reportedly in the area wearing a ski mask, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Orey was in her pajamas in her yard around 10:30 p.m. because she heard noises and thought it was her ex-husband, the newspaper reports.
Orey and Deputy Luke Berhalter came in contact and the officer's firearm discharged at point-blank range, her brother James Morgan told local Fox 5  News.
"He fired without warning, saying freeze, or anything. Then just as she saw the black smoke coming out the barrel she turned her body," Morgan said. "The bullet went through her chest and her left nipple, into her shoulder and out her pinkie."
The deputy reportedly told her, "I'm sorry, you startled me," Morgan told the television station.

Talk about ridiculous. The deputy can't even follow the 4 rules of gun safety.

1. Treat every firearm as if it were loaded.
2. Never cover anything with the muzzle that you aren't willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
4. Know your target and what's behind it.

[shadowrider]

1. Dude, don't you know the police are the only ones that should have guns cause they're trained

and stuff

[upaloopa]

2. Most felling people care about the victim

rather then their gun rights.

[rDigital]

3. It's a given that everyone feels for the victim. People aren't monsters just because they

don't share your point of view.

[GreenStormCloud]

4. Caring about both the victim and our gun-rights is NOT mutually exclusive.

It is easily possible to care about both.

[4th law of robotics]

6. I *feel* people shouldn't be at the mercy of inept and trigger happy cops

do you agree or do you wish for more such incidents?

[rDigital]

20. Being associated with the "gun culture" seems to be frowned apon in many departments

Hence, we see such poor basic handling and marksmanship skills in the police that are entrusted to protect us.

[Clames]

7. Felling people?

Seems the deputy did the felling of a person in this case.

[4th law of robotics]

5. Police are trained professionals. Elite gun-carriers that don't make stupid mistakes

that's why they should be the only ones to carry guns.

If average citizens were allowed to carry they might do something stupid, like shooting someone in their own yard for no reason simply because they were "startled". Of course if some idiotic citizen were to do that the full weight of the legal system would come crashing down on them for their dangerous incompetence!

Thankfully we give cops all that power since they have demonstrated an ability to use it reliably.

[Loudly]

27. Cops have guns because YOU do.

And YOU do because you think you may need to go to war with the police and the army.

Try to frame a constitutional argument for any such "right" without that basic premise as your foundation.

[rDigital]

28. Actual bad guys always have guns and other weapons. Firearms are just the most effective weapons.

Do you think cops should engage in knife fights with local hoods? Guns are more of a discovery, like fire, than an invention. That genie is out of the bottle forever.

[Loudly]

30. Not hardly. It is a policy decision what we allow to proliferate to society's detriment.

Child pornography being a perfectly applicable and enduring analogy by contrast.

A thing deemed harmful in and of itself. Zero tolerance for mere possession.

[rDigital]

31. False equivalence: Are police using child porn to defend themselves from deadly threats? nt

[Loudly]

32. Images deemed harmful in and of themselves.

Cannot possess them. Not protected by the 1st Amendment.

Are guns and ammunition any less harmful?

Certainly *more* harmful as a threat to life and safety.

So all one can say about the so-called "right" of access to guns and ammo is that it is a political indulgence of some peoples' particular kink.

You can't call it a right any more than you can call access to kiddie porn a right.

One is merely indulged and the other isn't, with no adequate justification to distinguish the two.

[rDigital]

33. Nice dodge, you didn't answer the question though. Can the police protect themselves with child

porn?

That analogy is intentionally inflammatory and ridiculously ambiguous.

Also, the 2nd Amendment is and inalienable right that is enumerated in our Constitution. The Supreme Court even agrees, the same court that held up the ACA supports the individual right to keep and bear arms.

[Loudly]

34. What am I dodging? A relevant question seriously posed?

And how does the answer advance your argument that access to guns and ammo is a right?

And what do the police have to do with the political indulgence of things deemed harmful in themselves?

Other than having to defend themselves against the lethal kink on the one hand being indulged?

Sorry but you've made a mess and I don't know how to help you clean it up.

[rDigital]

35. And how does the answer advance your argument that access to guns and ammo is a right?

The 2nd Amendment as interpreted by our current sitting supreme court is your answer. Check out the Heller case.

[Loudly]

36. Don't make me defend Scalia and Thomas.

Those buffoons don't know what the Court is for.

[gejohnston]

29. so why do Japanese cops (mostly) carry guns?

On the other hand, private gun ownership in Norway is close to the US, but the cops don't carry there (imagine applying for a CCW in that case, kind of awkward don't you think?)

[4th law of robotics]

37. In no way is that an accurate statement

please revise.

[Starboard Tack]

8. Another good reason to disarm them.

Hope the deputy gets charged.

[rDigital]

10. I give you credit. I've read a lot of your posts.

You dont want ANYONE, including LEOs, to carry firearms. You're principled in your opinions, and that's respectable.

[Starboard Tack]

11. Thank you. That pretty much sums it up.

Obviously, there are occasions when it makes sense to be armed, whether one is LE or civilian. But indiscriminate carry, especially in urban environments, puts us on a slippery slope.
I know many gun owners and I enjoy target shooting, but I don't know anyone outside of LE who carries. Most of those I discuss the issue with agree with me. A few think it impossible to disarm LE. I disagree. Mind you, tasers and pepper spray are weapons and if used correctly can be highly effective, as can rubber bullets. However, the trend seems to be towards greater lethality and effectiveness.

[TPaine7]

12. When people's lives are on the line, they tend to want the most effective way to stop the threat.

However, the trend seems to be towards greater lethality and effectiveness.

Wanting the most effective way to stop a lethal threat is likely hard-wired into the human psyche.

[Starboard Tack]

14. True. We are also hard wired to rut in the street.

Working through it is part of what we call evolution.

[TPaine7]

17. Rutting in the street is not necessary to survival, or even to passing on one's genes.

Effectively stopping a lethal threat is.

Evolution cannot override survival imperatives; the reason should be obvious.

[rDigital]

19. Well stated rebuttal to condescending elitist tripe. Nt

[ileus]

9. He should have had a can of beans.

[DanTex]

13. Inadequate gun laws are a major reason for accidents like this and the NYC shootings.

A while back I posted an OP about how, in an entire year, German police officers only used 85 bullets against people. And one major reason for this is the obvious: if you have sane gun control laws, then people, cops included, don't need to be constantly worried about being shot.

That doesn't mean this cop shouldn't be held responsible for his actions, but if we really want to reduce gun violence as a society, we need to realize that, so long as we have absurdly permissive gun laws that put everyone -- police and civilians -- at greater risk, then accidents like this are going to happen.

[gejohnston]

16. right, they fire in the air

in an urban area, possibly the bullets will land and kill a kid on a school ground a couple miles away. There is a good reason why such holiday stunts are illegal in the US.

[Jenoch]

18. What sort of

"sane gun control laws" do you propose be passed and enforced here and what strategies for passage do you propose?

[Euromutt]

21. I don't suppose you read the original Spiegel article...

Polizei schoss 2011 seltener im Dienst

Loosely translated, "Police fired less frequently in line of duty in 2011." The very reason the item is newsworthy is that there has been a decreasing trend in use of firearms by German police (which, it might be noted, does not include counter-terrorism units GSG-9 and KSK, which are part of the Border Protection agency and the army, respectively) in recent years. Since German gun laws have remained largely unchanged for decades, this trend can hardly be attributed to gun laws.

According to the article, Lorenz Caffier, interior minister of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in his capacity as chairman of the Conference of Interior Ministers (Germany is a federal republic):

Our police are no "rowdies in uniform." The are obligated exclusively to justice and law, and fulfill the task that we as a society placed upon them on the basis of the Rule of Law.

This touches on an important point where German history diverges from American history: since the Nazi period, the Germans are very leery about the state (in every sense) using--and being seen to be using--excessive force. The primary German counter-terrorist unit, GSG-9, was raised from the Border Protection agency ("GSG" is short for Grenzschützgruppe - "border protection group&quot rather than the armed forces out of an explicit fear of creating a new SS. Contrast this with the (para)militarization of the American police in recent decades, due to first the "War on Drugs," compounded over the past decade by the "War on Terror." Germany doesn't want to be perceived as waging war on anything.

At the same time, however, German culture--and that of most countries in Europe--is significantly more deferential to the authority of the state than American culture. Even if Germans possessed firearms to a comparable extent as Americans, they wouldn't be inclined to shoot at cops to the same extent simply because the police are agents of the state and the state is not perceived as representing "The Man" or "the 1%" or whatnot. The distrust of government in American culture can be traced to the wave of immigration from the English-Scottish border marches (where "government" primarily consisted of some army marching through and "commandeering" all your livestock) and to some extent the influence on American drug gang from the 1970s onward of Jamaican "posses," to whom the police are merely just another gang, albeit a better-funded and -equipped one (which, in Jamaica, they are).

Speaking of Jamaica, Jamaica has quite stringent gun laws, where possession of an unlicensed round of ammunition can net you a life sentence in prison. In spite of which, the country has had a violence problem for decades, even scoring #1 in national homicide rates not too long ago. It really isn't as simple as "more stringent gun laws => less violence." Russia has gun laws roughly on a par with the United Kingdom's, and yet the amount of violence (in the form of rates of both assault and homicide) well exceeds that of the United States. Sure, comparatively little of it is gun violence, but the homicide victims are just as dead. You can "prove" anything you want if you cherry-pick your data, be it "Germany has more stringent gun laws than the US, and fewer people murdered, therefore gun laws work" on the one hand, or "Jamaica and Russia have more stringent gun laws than the US, but more people murdered, therefore gun laws don't work."

[rDigital]

22. You're going to get a reply

Telling you that Russia's and Jamaica's numbers don't count because they don't have a Starbucks in every corner.

It gets wild around here, some use terms like "industrialized nations" to cherry pick data and exclude Russia from that group. Russia, a superpower... is not "industrialized"? It's insanity.

[DanTex]

23. Umm... I'm not claiming that the reduction in police shootings in Germany

is due to changes in German gun laws. I'm claiming that the fact that Germany has far less police shootings than the US is because if you have strict enough gun laws, the amount of gun violence is so low that police don't even need to shoot very often.

As for Jamaica and Russia, this might well be the dumbest NRA talking point of all. Nobody is claiming that guns are the only factor determining homicide rates. It's not like you can count the guns and use that to determine exactly the number of homicides there are going to be. Pro-gunners need to understand the concept of ceteris paribus, because, ceteris paribus, more guns lead to more homicide, but obviously there are many other factors as well.

And that's why comparing countries that are similar in other ways besides guns is essential if you want to have a meaningful comparison. The US and Germany, UK, Canada, France, Australia, etc., the rest of the developed world have much in common, though they are obviously not identical. But when comparing the US to Russia or Jamaica, ceteris is not paribus.

Comparing the US to other developed nations is not cherry-picking, it is the natural comparison. It would be cherry picking if the US had higher homicide than half the developed world, and lower than the other half, and I only chose the higher half. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm looking at the entire developed world, and finding that the US a significantly higher homicide than any other developed country, and also significantly looser gun laws.

And, although I'm sure people in the NRA bubble are not aware of this, comparisons among developed nations like this are extremely common in other areas of policy analysis or social science. For example, During the health care debates, it was often pointed out that the US lags behind other developed nations in various health-related measures such as life expectancy and infant mortality, despite spending more on health care. But I don't think even Sarah Palin was dumb enough to try and argue that really we should be comparing the US to Jamaica and Russia.

[TPaine7]

24. Whereas comparing the US before and after widespread CCW and liberalization of gun laws

is illegitimate, right?

And that's why comparing countries that are similar in other ways besides guns is essential if you want to have a meaningful comparison. The US and Germany, UK, Canada, France, Australia, etc., the rest of the developed world have much in common, though they are obviously not identical. But when comparing the US to Russia or Jamaica, ceteris is not paribus.

Comparing apples to apples is less legitimate than comparing apples to Buicks.

Apparently, you think Japan is very similar to the US, too, or at least similar enough for your purposes (http://www.democraticunderground.com/117266065#post4). Japan is not racially or culturally diverse, and it has a very different history and culture, but it supports your point, right?

I guess my prior (sarcastic) agreement is still relevant:

TPaine7 (3,782 posts)
22. There are no cultural, demographic, historical, economic or

other differences between Japan and the US.

Essentially, gun laws are the only difference, thus allowing an easy but valid comparison that would otherwise be silly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/117266065#post22

[Euromutt]

25. Try including qualifications to your arguments when you make them

Rather than only making them after your arguments are challenged; at the very least, you could stop being quite so condescending when people respond to what you actually wrote, rather than what you retroactively claim went without saying. (Seriously, have you considered that your arguments might be better received if you made them without trying to insult your audience as often as possible?)

Initially you asserted:

<...> if you have sane gun control laws, then people, cops included, don't need to be constantly worried about being shot.

That's a pretty absolute statement; there's no breath of "ceteris paribus" or (if you prefer) "all other things being equal" in your earlier post. And I am familiar with the concept, thanks, which is precisely why I pointed out a number of differences between Germany and the US in my previous post.

Comparing the US to other developed nations is not cherry-picking, it is the natural comparison.

By what standard do you class a country as "developed"? GDP per capita? Human Development Index? Gini coefficient for economic inequality? Because when it comes to that last one, the US more closely resembles the developing world than it does the "developed." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.svg
Is it really such an outlandish idea that crime (including violent crime) might be more closely correlated to (socio-)economic inequality than it is to gun laws? Because there's another difference between the US and other "developed" nations: those other countries don't have a built-in socio-economic underclass of descendants of former slaves who, even after slavery was abolished, were systematically formally marginalized for another hundred years and in effect continue to be so. The amount of violent crime in America would be markedly lower if we could factor out young urban black males (and to a lesser extent, young urban Hispanic males), but unfortunately, they're the component parts of a monster that American history has created, partly by slavery and segregation and partly by America's highly conflicted attitude towards drugs (i.e. trying to stamp them out while having a massive appetite for them).

And while American and Jamaican society aren't directly comparable, Jamaica actually plays a major role in the big picture. By dint of being a transshipment point for South American cocaine, Jamaican gangs have been involved in the illicit drug trade since the late 1960s, and the "posses" and the "Yardies" (to use the US and UK idiom, respectively) have influenced the way black drug gangs operate since then, to the extent that the London Metropolitan Police Service has a special unit, Operation Trident, to deal with black-on-black gun violence because it constitutes the bulk of gun violence in the UK. As it does in the US, it might be noted: young black males are disproportionately represented among both perpetrators and victims of homicide, and this is not a coincidence. They are the demographic most likely to be involved in the trade in illicit drugs, a business in which disputes are usually settled in blood, and as a result become inured to violence as a means of resolving any conflict. The notion that it's not merely acceptable, but indeed required, to kill someone for showing you "disrespect" is one that finds its origins in the "government yards" of western Kingston.

Nobody is claiming that guns are the only factor determining homicide rates.

That's a rather disingenuous statement coming from someone who wrote in the preceding paragraph:

I'm claiming that <...> if you have strict enough gun laws, the amount of gun violence is so low that police don't even need to shoot very often.

If you used the phrase "ceteris paribus" anywhere in that sentence, I missed it. Frankly, the wording doesn't allow for its even being implied; it's a thoroughly sweeping statement and to then not only argue that, well, obviously there are exceptions (and, by the way, you must be a complete moron for not taking that as read) smacks more than a little of dishonest backpedaling.

[rDigital]

26. His whole point is the insults. He knows that he's on the losing side of history. The argument is

secondary to posters of his ilk. Hopefully, he joins Hoyt in Gungeon-Heaven soon.

[hack89]

15. Beats getting shot in her ass by a deputy.

Can't anyone write a decent headline anymore?

[AtheistCrusader]

38. Out her pinkie?

wtf