Attention Where did the Mesa cop shooting thread go?

[Telstra]

Well,
seems self defense is the best way if you live in the US.
I would buy guns as well if i live in the US even tho i am for get rid off all guns from civilians.

 

[PrinceCory]

We are also talking about a SWAT response. They arrived, set up, flooded the house, and the victim came out into a blinding flood of spotlights. If they were not behind shelter at that point in the operation, shame on them. If he pulled a weapon, which he did not, they had the advantage and should have been able to at least see a weapon from their secured positions.

Just for accuracy, this was NOT a SWAT response...it was first responders. Also, i believe in an early message you stated this was a kid. The first reports were not completely accurate. This was a 28 year old man. I've only seen one video so far (I think it's the one that made national media) but I understand all Officers had body-cams recording. It still was a tragic loss for this family.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Yes, I think we already clarified in the thread his age. Original reports suggested he was a young gamer, but were in error.

It was a vivid and tragic example of what is grossly wrong with police training in this country. Everything is not OK in the name of fear and extremism. Sanity needs to find a way in. Worst case scenario mentality cannot be allowed to be the only rationale and justification for this creep into a full-blown police state.

You've been here almost eight years. It would be nice to see you post more. You have a sensible style.

 

[PrinceCory]

There is an article in the local paper that this same California "creep" now has an arrest warrant out of Canada for making the same call (the threats were almost the same) on a woman in an apartment. However the woman somehow figured out she thought she was a victim of swatting and made contact with on-scene Officers as they were clearing out the apartments.

 

[Kulindahr]

.... but the gun law was at fault and the NRA was responsible for every death.

Right -- the country's foremost gun safety organization, trusted by police and sheriff department everywhere to train personnel, trusted by about forty states to train citizens in safe use, is responsible.

Give me a break -- the people who decide to misuse guns are responsible for the deaths they inflict.

 

[Kulindahr]

Death penalty is a monstrosity and I'm evidently against it. And once again, revenge is not justice. Killing the cop would have no effect by the way. Much better to improve the education and training of the police men.

Yes. The ONLY person with the right to take another's life is an intended victim, and then only in extremis. As noted on a popular gun discussion site recently, those who carry for defense of self and others have a responsibility to have other means of defense rather than going straight to lethal force.

 

[Kulindahr]

To judge failure, you would want to know what the cop knew at that point I.e. what the dispatcher told him. You would also want to know what he was thought about handling terrorists and mass killers. He was probably taught to shout at them, be very strict, tell them they are likely be shot of they don’t obey. Don’t give them a chance to pull a gun.
We tend to want to judge with the benefit of hindsight—info that the cop did not have—he was not a terrorist or mass shooter, only had an air gun to shoot birds, did not have a hand gun.

The real problem is that -- as many police themselves have admitted online and elsewhere -- police have no rules of engagement; former soldiers who have become police are astounded at how much more strict the rules were for firing their weapon when in Iraq or Afghanistan than as cops on the streets of America. If there were defined ROEs, things would be a lot clearer.


BTW, if you have watched the video or even read a good news article about this, you'd know your post resides in fantasy land.

 

[Kulindahr]

I have witnessed the button pushing that leads to an escalation of a situation. Many times it begins with verbal abuse.
I would never suggest that one attack a police officer, but, it is against human nature to ignore pain. If you are on the ground and have a few hundred pounds of cop on your back it's hard to breath. Then the cop starts yelling "quit resisting" as you squirm to take a breath.
That is not to say that all cops do this, but in the scenarios where an unarmed, out numbered citizen get the hell beat out of him by 2 or 3 cops and they claim that he "resisted" I would question just exactly what he was resisting.

It's the most common takedown procedure around here, certainly: deliberately inflict pain in hopes of getting resistance. It's cruel, inhumane, and vile.

 

[Kulindahr]

I saw that video elsewhere. It was very sad and deeply disturbing.

Are American cops so trigger-happy because they expect everyone else to be armed to the teeth?

I expect the UK will end up like that too once arming cops becomes routine here due to the terrorist threats.

No, they're trigger-happy because they lack discipline and have no rules of engagement to gain it from -- I get that from cops themselves online.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oddly enough, probably more people in rural areas have guns than urban areas.

Last numbers I remember seeing were 13% in urban areas, 48% in rural, overall for the U.S.

 

[Kulindahr]

Hmm... then I wonder why the difference in how urban and rural gunowners are viewed?

Maybe because 98+% of illegal use of guns happens in cities?

 

[Kulindahr]

No. Country people have shotguns and fewer rifles for hunting. Urban people are more likely to have hand guns..

I've never seen stats on that one -- it's likely true, though everyone rural I know has at least one sidearm.

 

[Kulindahr]

2) gun manufacturers use the NRA as a lobby for their interests, and money talks

That's a common myth, but the manufacturers and the NRA don't get along that well. The American Shooting Sports Foundation is a much closer ally for the manufacturers.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't know, the left right now are arming themselves pretty heavily in a lot of areas (I know they always have done, but it feels like the past year its really growing). Groups like Redneck Revolt and the John Brown Gun Club are doing it against the growth of the far right, and now a lot of queer groups like Trigger Warning and Pink Pistol are growing loads as well. Gun Clubs for the left are a big thing in urban areas right now.

According to a couple of sources, this last year the fastest-growing gun-owning population is black, female, and Democrat.

It kind of freaks out some of the "old guard".

 

[Kulindahr]

Those are the guns with declared owners. How many are there not declared?

That's a good point -- surveys of gun owners show that a LOT don't answer any polls about ownership; many will say they know someone with a gun, which isn't lying, it just isn't specifying it's themselves.

A scary fact: 50% of the guns in American are owned by 3% of the population. These "super-collectors" are largely white men and they live in rural areas of the Southeastern US.

Many rural owners have multiple guns because of multiple uses: sidearm for the woods, sidearm for self defense, bunny gun, varmint gun, deer rifle, elk rifle, bear rifle, shotguns for different purposes, and so on. Many have rifles just for fun; I know at least three guys with lever-action rifles just for the uniqueness (and a touch of Annie Oakley fanship), and a dozen or more who have rifles handed down since the Civil War or before. There are guys who collect war rifles; I know one with a rifle from every American conflict since the Civil War, including the different areas of action (and often both sides of the conflict) -- that alone is a couple of dozen. And most of them get shot just once a year to be sure they still work, often on a day associated with the specific war.

 

[Kulindahr]

Accuracy can become a difficult prospect when you find yourself in a state of alarm and your “fight or flight response” (AKA: hyper arousal, acute stress response) kicks in. Even with previous instructor training on a firing range, that little wiggle in your nervous wrist can make it quite challenging to send the missile where you want it to go. It becomes more complicated in the case of a moving target. Hence, the shotgun is sometimes recommended for personal protection in the home. Just knowing that precision in your aim isn’t a major factor (should you decide it is necessary to point and pull the trigger) might actually help you keep calm during whatever emergency your senses are reporting to you. Remaining calm is quite possibly the most valuable tool to help you through those situations – even better than having a gun in your home.

A shotgun is sometimes recommended because of the "pucker factor": the sound of a pump-action gun "racking" a round into the chamber is significantly unsettling to those who know the sound (which isn't as many as it used to be, but is still high due to movies). In fact, there are home security systems that trip a recording of a shotgun being racked, and it's apparently rather effective!


Just BTW, there's a simple aiming technique with a handgun that just about guarantees a hit with little training. The one drawback to it is it tends to result in gut shots rather than center-of-gravity ones (the latter being recommended for stopping a threat). I'll see if I can find a video showing it, as it's better shown than described.

 

[Kulindahr]

Unfortunately, America is a place where the right to drive, right to vote and the right to own a gun don't seem to require any ability, competence or intelligence. So, we spend a lot of time and effort avoiding unwanted interactions with bad drivers, bad politicians and bad people with guns.

This thanks to Congress failing to exercise its authority (Article I, Section 8) to provide for discipline of the militia -- "discipline" meaning to establish standards of training and enforce them, "militia" meaning all citizens and legal residents. Ironically, Congress did so more dependably when it was pretty much assumed that if you owned a gun, you got trained with it; now that it's really needed, they're too chicken to tackle the matter.

And gun owners, especially those who carry, understand that last line; it's a standard refrain to avoid bad situations and bad people especially at bad times, the point being to stay away from any situation that might possibly lead to the need for self-defense. Sometimes it's expressed by saying that if there's a place you would want to be sure to have your gun it you go there... don't go there.

 

[Kulindahr]

^ Indeed, especially since these 'swattings' have been going on for almost 2 decades. This shouldn't be new for them. And shooting the victim just because he was moving his hands toward his waistline. There was no hint of a weapon. And why don't the police shoot to incapacitate? A shot in the leg will put a man on the floor or a shot in the arm will surly slow him down if he's going for a weapon. You don't have to put a bullet in a person's chest to stop him from shooting you.

^ it's not quite as easy as that Neil. Police and military are trained to fire at the mass of the body. You're more likely to hit it. I think less than lethal force should have been used in both of these situations if the cops truly felt in danger.

Alistair is spot on: only an idiot, or someone who trains as a professional shooter, tries for any shot but center of mass. The typical U.S. cop trains with his/her sidearm with less than 50 rounds per month (less than most of the Pink Pistols I shoot with), which is barely enough to remember the basics, let alone develop any proficiency. It's a lamentable fact that those often depended on to be trained with firearms just aren't.

And the goal of defensive shooting is to stop the threat. That means keeping your attention on the threat and relying on muscle-memory training to point your weapon correctly, which means you're not shooting bullseye's, you're shooting a "box" in which any point is as good as another to hit and do the job. Further, when adrenaline is flowing, a shot in the leg or arm may have no effect at all except to make the bad guy angry -- it's not uncommon for even a hit to the chest to fail to stop someone. This is why police and other defensive shooters argue over "stopping power": the biology isn't dependable, so you rely on physics, and that means delivering enough force to the center of mass to shut the bad guy down.

There's nothing pretty about defensive shooting, which is why hardly any gun owners ever want to have to resort to it. They just know from the newspapers that this is a society (for whatever reasons) where having the capacity to do so can save your life and/or that of loved ones.

 

[Kulindahr]

The problem remains that the systemic shooting of civilians is a direct result of policies by law enforcement that inappropriately assumes every call-out is the worst-case-scenario and really provide no practical accountability of the officers for using intelligence in place of fear.

Our one remaining officer here who trained as a "peace officer" has had some telling things to say about his younger colleagues and drawing their guns. He has faced threats they consider lethal with just words and patience; they're too ready to go for the ultimate solution when it isn't necessary. I actually got to watch him in such a situation, as I was assistant to the manager of a set of apartments when there was a call about an argument; his hand never even approached his holster despite the fact that there were potentially lethal items held by two people involved (butcher knife, broken glass bottle) -- where his younger colleagues would have drawn, ordered the two to the ground, and fired if there wasn't immediate compliance, he settled the situation without even raising his voice.

Worth mentioning is the different standards for peace officers and law-enforcement officers: the former only use the law if situations can't be calmed down and made peaceful; the latter go straight to arrests on the slightest reason (because they get points toward promotion for making arrests). The officer I referenced above was trained that if you have to go for your sidearm, you've already failed; the new guys think drawing is a route to winning.

 

[Kulindahr]

Well,... i am for get rid off all guns from civilians.

Can't be done, as police in L.A. and elsewhere in California are learning: more and more, guns used in crimes were made "at home", or (as is suspected) by tidy little machine shops set up and run by gangs using entirely legal equipment anyone can purchase at builder's supply store. Some even use parts made by 3-D printing, which doesn't make for reliable guns in terms of how long they last, but a criminal only cares if his gun is going to work on the next "job".

The only recourse is to establish standards and require citizens to meet them -- which Congress can do under its constitutional authority -- because the bad guys are going to have guns no matter what.