General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm gonna say it: I think cops could have been shot by RW agitators [View all]blm
(113,260 posts)"The US features a unique and toxic mix of gun culture and militant anti-governmentalism. As a result, police officers arent entirely wrong to believe that theyre operating in a potential combat zone.
Although motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for cops on the beat, an average of 57 police officers were killed with guns in the US annually between 2001 and 2010; of the 17 members of law enforcement killed in Ireland since the end of The Troubles in 1998, only two were gunshot victims (one in a case of friendly-fire).
Fifty-seven may seem a relatively small number in a country of over 300 million, but many more officers are wounded or fired upon (there are no nationwide statistics for these lesser incidents of gun violence).
Police in the US also face a unique challenge and singular threat from anti-government extremists. No other police force in a functional democracy has experienced something like the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada in April, where federal agents found themselves outgunned by heavily-armed militias which included well-trained military veterans holding the strategic high ground.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted last week, a new report from the Department of Homeland Security found that, after years of sporadic violence from domestic extremists motivated by antigovernment ideologies, there has been a spike within the past year in violence committed by militia extremists and lone offenders who hold violent anti-government beliefs.' Last month, a survey of 364 officials from 175 law enforcement agencies conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START) found that members of the Sovereign Citizens movement are now considered to be the greatest terrorist threat faced by law enforcement. Third on the list, after Islamic extremists, were members of militia and patriot groups.
Since 2002, Sovereign Citizens have killed at least ten members of law enforcement, and failed in a number of other attempts, including two potentially deadly incidents in the past three months alone. And while most are nonviolent, with an estimated 300,000 members of the Sovereign Citizens in the US, only a fraction need to take up arms and target law enforcement to constitute a danger to the police."
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That report, from last Aug, obviously doesn't include the latest shootings like in Penn and Texas. Surprised you never heard of any this. It was posted about during the Bundy ranch drama.