12/19/13 11:10 AM

http://gawker.com/lapd-cops-shot-and-killed-an-unarmed-mentally-ill-man-o-1486367180

12/19/13 11:28 AM

"The three officers who fired the 15 to 20 rounds that killed Beaird have been removed from the field pending the results of the department's investigation."

See, that never happens. Anyone who thinks it does not has themselves properly deluded.

I have little doubt that statement was true regarding the clip empty syndrome claim.

12/19/13 12:09 PM

quote:

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someone lost their nerve and started shooting, which triggered a reaction among the other officers that resulted a large number of shots being fired

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12/19/13 12:19 PM

"what shall we expect from a bunch of armed civilian?"

Less training, poorer aim compensated with more clip emptying probably and bigger clips, nah for sure not...

12/19/13 1:34 PM

http://gawker.com/seattle-bus-passengers-band-together-to-take-down-armed-1486498479

12/19/13 2:01 PM

"owe your hurting me", hope he got some broken bones for his trouble.

That could have ended so many ways worse...

Last edited by Sparky on 12/19/13 4:42 PM; edited 1 time in total

12/19/13 3:57 PM

Some of the comments on gawker were appropriately sarcastic:

"too bad they didn't all have guns, there could have been a 12-way freedom crossfire."

12/19/13 5:05 PM

Legally armed civilians out number armed LEOs but rarely shoot and when they do actually hit effectively more often than LEOs.

Per my training which I received from SC SLED.

Civilians do not draw as quickly as LEOs, most often for fear of reacting incorrectly.

12/19/13 5:39 PM

Is this your opinion Erik, or data that indicates as well?

12/19/13 10:21 PM

Per the instructor, I have no idea where his data came from. I have to assume SC SLED.

12/20/13 9:46 AM

Sounds like biased conjecture, simply because I can't imagine how anyone can collect the data to substantiate that statement.

12/20/13 10:18 AM

Except as soon as it was put on the internet that made it true...

12/20/13 12:09 PM

You don't like guns and you don't like armed civilians, we get that.

I never said that high-volume shootings never happen; I said that "they are an aberration, not the norm". High-profile TV stories like the one cited above represent only a tiny fraction of actual police shootings and are not indicative of what typically happens.

As for your assertions about civilians, when was the last time that you heard about a high-volume self-defense shooting by a civilian or group of civilians? I'll wager that you never have, because such incidents are exceeding rare. I certainly cannot recall one. It's just another "it could happen" red herring. If every hysterical prediction by anti-gun types came true, we'd all be spending our days shooting at each other and the streets would be constantly awash in blood. It's just BS.

12/20/13 12:37 PM

I was trying to make a joke actually, and thought my request to Erik was posed quite respectfully, commensurate with my feeling towards him, regardless of how much I don't agree with him on topics, mainly the gun shit.

Sorry if it came off the wrong way, or did i miss where I am being a jerk?

I am not going to go counter point as to assist your case for why I am wrong. Suffice to say I equate the gun issue simply as why walk so close to the edge of a cliff when you can walk a few feet in. It is really math for me honestly, I like to think. It is the passive aggressive side of me of being told why we should all have guns and endure the risks of the collateral shrapnel that can make me push back.

Sorry If I offended...

12/20/13 1:03 PM

"Young people have killed thousands of people in simulated combat by the time this type of occurs."

While I find this statement particularly ugly I suspect there is a large degree of truth to it which would seemingly explain a great deal...well except for the fact that I believe the statement is just as applicable to young people north of the US border and possibly elsewhere in the world too.

So why don't kids in Canada and elsewhere in the world constantly shoot up their schools?

And before that anti-gun title gets applied to me I'll have you know I just spent this very morning within arms reach of an arsenal of weaponry and it didn't bother me one bit and neither did the guy I've been best friends with for the past 45 years who happens to own all those weapons. What would bother me would be if my friend was 'normal' thus meaning there were so fuckin many guns around anyone sick dick who wanted one wouldn't have a hard time getting it.

12/20/13 2:52 PM

quote:

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So why don't kids in Canada and elsewhere in the world constantly shoot up their schools?

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12/20/13 2:59 PM

Apparently I missed the joke, so no harm, no foul. Sorry for snapping at you.

12/20/13 3:08 PM

Nada problemo, this happens here every once in a great while. ;)


Feel free to edit the inflammatory subject line out and we can all continue to play nice...

Last edited by Sparky on 12/20/13 5:32 PM; edited 1 time in total

12/20/13 3:17 PM

Linda and I were up in Quebec this summer and it struck me that the social dynamic was very 1980's, in a GOOD way. I saw very few people walking around with their noses stuck in their phones, even business types and teenage kids. Families were actually talking with each other <gasp!> and engaged in what they were collectively doing. Although it's not necessarily related, I also noticed that people were the same size as Americans were in the '80's, before obesity became the norm. My question is whether this is prevalent nationwide in Canada or is it just unique to the culture of Quebec?

The reason I ask is that one huge social problem down here is the lack of real engagement between parents and kids and between kids themselves. It seems that most parents don't actually do anything with their kids, they just shuttle them to planned activities, then wander off to work on their laptops or smart phones. Family meals are much less common than they once were. It seems that kids rarely have unscripted interaction with each other. Video games, often violent ones, serve as electronic babysitters so that parents can do their own thing.

My point is that there is obviously a breakdown of connection and empathy between people in this country. Maybe it's just the result or the self-indulgent "Me Generation" becoming parents or perhaps it's much more than that. Either way, there has to be a cultural cause for the violence in this country.

12/20/13 6:24 PM

Back in my working days Quebec was a 10 minute walk, across the Interprovincial Bridge, used to go there for lunch regularly. Also have a number of friends in Montreal, and other than the language differences I can't say I notice much else. Funny thing is I can basically say the same (obesity aside) about the time I spend in the Catskills. Possibly I'm not as observant as you, but I just don't think there are a lot of differences, certainly not particularly significant ones.

While it's clear the US has always had lots of guns maybe the difference now is this whole 'video game thing' has a greater impact on you guys than the rest of the world...certainly something has changed. I just don't think there are a lot of differences between our kids and your kids, personally I think they are all losers to some degree, which of course just goes to prove how old I'm getting.

12/21/13 4:46 AM

I think you guys are onto something...

To grossly oversimplify, social scientists (among others) like to think about both necessary and sufficient conditions.

Perhaps cultural differences matter and perhaps weapon availability matters.

That is to say, it's not the easy access to guns per se that causes the gun violence problem. Not is it video games per se that causes the gun violence problem. Both (and likely a few other things) are necessary, but neither is in itself sufficient.

That is, when violent video games are popular and when weapons commonly used in those games are easily accessible, the outcome is more likely to be an increase in violence using those weapons than would be the case if either of those conditions was missing.

What's more, I think this kind of thing can become self-perpetuating. Fear of violence begets public recognition that violence occurs, which begets more fear of violence, which ultimately is going to lead to people carrying weapons for self-defense, which has the potential to increase the level of violence (certainly it increases the availability of weapons).

You can add factors like population density and ethnic diversity into the mix, since these two tend to work together to increase social tension and fear. However, Canada might also help to show that these are only "necessary" factors as well: fiver or six years ago I spent a week in Vancouver, BC for work. Several things struck me: (1) high levels of ethnic diversity (which lead to a wonderful variety of restaurants, BTW); (2) the very weak level of street lighting (compared to, say, Chicago or New York) (someone told me Vancouver was a "dark skies initiative" city, don't know if that's true); (3) the very large number of people walking around after dark in many parts of the city.

(I've sometimes speculated that fear works to reduce the number of walkers, and that this plugs back into self-perpetuating cycle above--this is the idea behind things like Take Back the Night walks)

In any event, Canadians seemed slightly more civil to me than, say, "Americans," but, like Paul, I didn't notice much of a difference otherwise.

The point is, multiple factors matter here. It would be naive to think otherwise. The real question then becomes, can we do anything about one (or more) of the necessary factors? I'd like to think so. Otherwise, we're stuck in a situation where things like Sandy Hook will continue to occur.

12/21/13 9:18 AM

Guns are actually harder to obtain than they were decades ago and the percentage of homes with guns in them has declined from 50% in the '70's to 34% in 2012.

Prior to 1968, you could buy any kind of handgun, rifle or shotgun via mail order with no government paperwork, no background check, nor any other restrictions and many more households had guns in them, yet gun crime was low and mass shootings were essentially unheard of. Moreover, I don't ever recall an incident of a child shooting another child intentionally. One reason for this is that kids who were exposed to firearms were taught to respect them. We understood the grave consequences of misusing them and we simply didn't do it.

Something in American society has profoundly changed for horrendous acts of violence to be seen by some young people as a means of solving their problems. When I was a kid, disputes were settled with the occasional fist-fight/wrestling match and they ended quickly with rarely any more damage than a black eye or a bloody nose. It was amazing how well that released tensions between kids and there were rarely any ongoing issues. If things got out of hand between kids, the parents spoke with each other and typically took whatever action was necessary to end the problem.

It really makes me wonder if the major problem here is that nobody takes responsibility for anything anymore and relatively harmless stress-relievers such as tussles between kids are treated as crimes that require mindless "zero tolerance" policies. Everyone expects teachers, school boards, government social service agencies and the police to deal with what were once simple issues that kids usually worked out on their own. It seems to me that this just increases the tensions in society. Kids with "behavior problems" are routinely drugged, rather that being counseled and taught coping skills. Combine all this with the constant bombardment of violence in the media, music and video games, that glorifies slaughter and desensitizes people to it, and and it's not too hard to understand how frustrated kids lash out in violent outbursts.

The real question is what do we do to address this? How can we reverse a social problem that has been building for decades?

12/21/13 12:16 PM

Add into the equation along with the violence in gaming [we did not let ours shoot people, only monsters in an attempt FWIW or wjhat good it may have done], and the popularity in movies for 1st person violence.

To name a few styles of 'entertainment' which only serves to perpetuate said violence and shoot em up mentality. Segals, Rambos, etc etc.

The Segal movies in particular with the requite arm getting broken backwards et al. This shit did not exist that I recall when I was a kid.

It blended into the 'entertainment' norm from military & para military/terrorism of a sort or the other into full societal violence. Dare I say a case where the downside of free speech has collateral damage?

But it may allow kids to think that is what is OK in real life when things get beyond deal-ability?

A far a CAN VS US as far was that goes, I dunno...

Last edited by Sparky on 12/21/13 4:28 PM; edited 1 time in total

12/21/13 4:24 PM

Brian:

By "availability" I meant the fact that US has more firearms per capita than any other country (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country), and that the absolute number of weapons is pretty high. Certainly, this is true vis-a-vis Canada, so it's relevant to the current discussion, even if the measures are imprecise. It's more difficult to legally obtain newly-manufactured weapons now than it once was, but guns are generally durable goods. But as I said above, that's only one of a number of factors.

I do think that there are some pretty serious cultural factors involved. We are surfing some dangerous waves of stuff that we don't know how to deal with. Instant communication with everyone everywhere gives people less time to cool down and think. (I worked one semester in law school helping people file temporary restraining orders. Eye opening.)

There are, in the US, 50% more of us than there were when I graduated high school in 1976. It's more crowded.

Video games are certainly a part of it, as is the level of violence in entertainment--though I think the last can cut both ways. It can create an appealing blood lust in some, and in others it can raise the gorge to the point of putting people off violence. But that's varies from individual to individual.

The impersonality of killing is, I suspect another factor. One of my classmates was a sniper and taught at sniper school. I'm sure he's seen horrors through his scope, but at the same time, the killing is remote in the same way that killing from a drone is remote.

12/21/13 7:16 PM

The entertain industry has hardened everyone. Violence is so graphic that the real thing is actually less gruesome, I know.

I don't buy that more people create more violence. Those numbers should be posited using per capita info.