Is there anything or anybody that the US police won't shoot?

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Not content with shooting black people, women and adolescents, the police in a state in America have now shot dead a non aggressive dog which was on its own property DM link here

Where will this end?

A toddler having a tantrum in a store?

A baby crying for its bottle?

A pet rabbit?

An elderly person crossing the road?

"Yes acts of violence potentially with guns, which have a far greater chance of leading to fatal injury. And if they're not so common, then, er, that means less chance fatal injury? "

Not really, a blow with a blunt instrument to the head can be just as deadly as a gunshot. And being stabbed with a knife can be as bad if not worse, at least with a gunshot the wound is clean and precision made, a stab wound can be awfully mangled and do more harm. Banning guns doesn't actually make society safer, it just means that law abiding people are less able to protect themselves against those who seek to do them harm - whether that harm is with guns or without them.

I read a report recently that shows most of the officers shooting people (we have had a huge problem locally) are newly trained. Apparently the more experienced officers do try to de- escalate situations, but there is a culture of shoot first that has been actively supported by the police superiors. There was also a really bad shooting here that seemed to justify that attitude.

But here, where I am, they'll soft anyone, but not on Fridays!

It would make sense Little, like young drivers being at higher risk. It simply takes time to learn how to use a lethal weapon like a car or a gun. It's also a question of attitude, whether you regard yourself as someone who can 'handle' it or whether you are more mature and regard it as a failure to have to accelerate or even to try to get your gun out.

Fascist bollocks.
Someone with a gun who flips can kill 20 people.
Oh right, someone else with a gun could stop him. Yes, they can have a gunfight and kill another 20 in crossfire.
You want the right of nervous white people in the UK to shoot people of colour for walking / running / breathing while black, like happens in the USA.

Don'thaveausername - I couldn't disagree with your statement more:

'Banning guns doesn't actually make society safer, it just means that law abiding people are less able to protect themselves against those who seek to do them harm - whether that harm is with guns or without them.'

Guns are for one purpose and that is injuring or killing another person. I have knives in my home because I use them for cooking, I have blunt instruments in my home because they are part of the decor or have another use eg for sport. If I have a gun in my home it is so that I can hurt another person with it.

How the states can justify guns as a means of protecting yourself when it is likely the reason you are at an increased risk of danger is because the other person is carrying a gun is beyond me. And the high school mass shootings which occur, they just don't happen in countries where untrained citizens are not allowed guns. How have guns made society better?

Guns aren't just to harm people and I reject that if you have a gun it's because your going to harm someone. In fact it's probably the opposite, it's because you desperately dont want anyone to be harmed, yourself included. It never receives much attention in mainstream media (I wonder why) but all over the US, armed citizens prevent or intervene in crimes and save lives all the time. Someone is being raped or assaulted, an armed citizen confronts the attacker and keeps them covered until police arrive and take them away.

You basically answered your own question. Owning for protection is seen as a necessary due to bad guys having guns. The anti gun lobby will say just introduce laws banning guns but that doesn't stop the bad people from having them, the criminals don't follow laws in the first place. Gun control means your attacker still has a weapon but you dont. No gun control means you also have a weapon or you at least have the choice. People who feel safer unarmed are not required to carry.

As you well know don't a woman is actually more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted in the us than in the UK. Knife crime is more common per head of population in the uk but far from nonexistent in the us and kills a tiny number compared to gun crime in either country. Violent crimes that resemble your scenario of the good citizen 'covering' the rapist until the police arrive aren't often heard about because they don't happen. Not sure who has called the police in your fantasy world, the good person with a gun using a spare hand, or the victim who has been allowed to get her phone out and make that call.

Either, it's not like the attacker is going to be keen on stopping her getting her phone out with a gun trained on him. Also not sure why you said covering with the speech marks around the word?

The US cannot be directly compared to the UK in statistics because of their state system, there are varying gun laws in each state. When you examine it in a state by state basis, a consistent pattern emerges - the states with strict gun control have higher gun and violent crime rates than the ones with liberal gun laws.

Don't that's not true. There isn't a consistent pattern either way according to factcheck.org. I would say the figures they cite lean to the common sense position of fewer deadly weapons in circulation resulting in less crime with a weapon and less suicide, but it isn't a straightforward picture.

I used 'covering' like that because it sounds such a portentous word to me. And my point was that most sexual assaults and rapes don't happen the way you describe. Nobody is watching most of them and the most likely user of a weapon is the criminal.

" If something happened that made him think the dog was a threat he would be justified in doing what he did, even if it later transpired the dog was never a threat."

Nothing happens, it's all on the surveillance video, he knocks, the door opens and the dog starts to go out into the garden and he shoots it straight away, the owner hadn't even quite finished opening the door.

I know nothing about American police or training, but that officer absolutely made a huge mistake. The dog literally does nothing other than start to exit it's own house into it's own garden, with the owner right behind it.

"Don't that's not true. There isn't a consistent pattern either way according to factcheck.org. I would say the figures they cite lean to the common sense position of fewer deadly weapons in circulation resulting in less crime with a weapon and less suicide, but it isn't a straightforward picture."

It's not "common sense" to deny law abiding people the right to protect themselves. Guns are a force equalizer in that regard, allowing a physically frail woman, or a pensioner, an equal chance against a tall muscular assailant. Not a guarantee that it will protect them, but a chance, which is better than nothing.

"I used 'covering' like that because it sounds such a portentous word to me. And my point was that most sexual assaults and rapes don't happen the way you describe. Nobody is watching most of them and the most likely user of a weapon is the criminal."

I used it so as to describe what the armed civilian would do, covering the assailant while help arrives/police get on scene to arrest that assailant. Still not sure why you seem to have a problem with me using a word to accurately describe what happens.

DontHaveAUsername ' It never receives much attention in mainstream media (I wonder why) but all over the US, armed citizens prevent or intervene in crimes and save lives all the time. Someone is being raped or assaulted, an armed citizen confronts the attacker and keeps them covered until police arrive and take them away.'

Patently untrue. According to the FBI, between 2000 and 2013 there were 160 shooter incidents overall with increasing frequency year on year.
Of these, only 5 were resolved with assistance from armed civilians, compared to 21 which were resolved with assistance from unarmed civilians.
FBI press release

..so 5 incidents assisted by armed civilians. Lets take a simple view and not even consider the number of those criminal activities which wouldn't have happened at all if guns were much harder to get hold of, but just consider the people who die as a result of gun accidents in the US: The lobby groups tell us that the federal statistics are woefully underreported but even if the reported values are accurate: 62 children killed accidentally by guns every year.

Your justification for having the guns out in society just don't add up. It actually makes it easier for the police to do their job: holding a handgun=criminal.
Removing the guns lowers the stress levels so that the police won't need to take the default position of escalating to complete an incident when they meet resistance.

Except you aren't removing the guns, criminals will not decide to obey that law, only law abiding good people will. So you remove the guns from good people while letting bad people continue to carry them. And this is meant to LOWER the stress?

Disarming just makes everyone vulnerable and unable to defend themselves against an attack. Well the physically strong may have a shot, but the frail and the weak are basically screwed. Whereas with access to a gun, a weak frail pensioner has a fighting chance against a big strong athletic attacker. A society that is disarmed becomes timid because as everyone has no means of protection they are always worried in case the other person gets violent. An armed society is a polite society, when you know that your neighbour is armed then you'll always make sure that any disputes you have are settled peacefully.

I should make a dedicated threat for this discussion as I have been meaning to and don't want to move this specific threads focus away from the officer and his actions sorry

..but the stats clearly show that being armed does not make it easier/likelier for you to foil an attack: 5 cases with armed citizens, 21 with unarmed citizens in the FBO press release I linked.

It is easy access to guns which arms most criminals: getting the easy access removed will be a start. Then the guns held by the law abiding citizenry (which will, by the way, also remove guns from the criminal relatives of law abiding citizenry), then armistice for those without permits, then it becomes illegal to even own a handgun and therefore much less likely that kids hanging out on street corners are likely to be carrying.

Which leaves guns in the hands of really nasty criminals only: these were never the criminals who would be put off by having an armed civilian in front of them anyway. ...and by this point you've already cut out opportunist crimes of passion, accidental shootings, school kid mass murders.

Within the first year gun deaths/injuries would more than halve within the US.

FBI press release, sorry

It is weird with America and their gun laws. I went to LA and couldn't understand why their immigration officials had guns. I used to work for immigration here in the UK, and I didn't trust most of my colleagues to use a stapler
If the police didn't fear that any random citizen might be carrying a gun, then maybe they wouldn't be so trigger happy.

So DontHaveAUsername the means for killing are not greater in a society where firearms are ubiquitous. Is that really what you're saying?

It's one thing to go against the consensus just for the mental exercise, but if you actually believe it? ??

Sadly, I suspect she believes this crap.

Their latest victim is a 6yo autistic boy who died after his dad failed to stop.

The city marshalls reported the dad had warrants out for his arrest so they tried to stop him, he ran, then when cornered rammed their car several times before a gun battle ensued.

The boy was shot 5 times.

Its since come out that there were no warrants, no gun in the car, and its even doubtful the dad rammed the police car. Basically a little boy was killed by city marshalls because his father Failed to Stop.

If that is indeed all there is to this story then it it unacceptable and the officer(s) should be charged for the killing.

Try not to think of the police force (of any nation) as a hive mind. They are large organisations, drawing their recruits from the general population. So like the general population there will be hard working officers, lazy officers, fair ones and corrupt ones. A shooting if it turns out to be unjustified doesn't automatically mean the entire American police force has something wrong with it.

Donthave logic at work ~ He, (the driver) deserved to have his brains blown out, (possibly) not tried and jailed. And we the British public, (in a country where the state has to do better than repeat the crimes of the gun toting maniac) are just as likely to be killed by the Jolly village butcher going mad with a meat cleaver.

I don't think of the police as a hive mind. British suspicion of a possible police state and the desire to be policed by consent are two of the reasons we don't hand deadly weapons to an ordinary bunch of people who are just as likely to make mistakes as the rest of us.

Batshit lady you are completely wrong. The driver did deserved to be tried, as does anyone accused of a crime. And if this incident played out as described then I can see no reason why it would be legitimate and therefore the officer should be placed on trial.

Not sure what you are on about when you say "repeat the crimes of the gun toting maniac"?

Let's just look at what you're saying Donthave. You are saying that it's acceptable, indeed a good thing that in certain circumstances, human beings kill each other. That's it! Now I know you're going to object to that and deny it. But that is what you, by defending the ubiquity of guns in certain societies are saying. Sorry but it is. You see guns provide the easy and ready means for death and destruction (far more than swords or catapults posed centuries ago) and guns wouldn't exist if human beings didn't have the base desire to harm each other with them.

You refuse to acknowledge the wrongfulness of this act, as long as it's committed by the Police pursuing law and order. I say, as do many others thankfully, that no matter how unlikable the person the Police killed was, a state sponsored/societal killing machine is wrong on every conceivable moral level.

I'm not saying someone killed by the U.S Police as necessarily just a victim of circumstances, there is absolutely no doubt or qualification about the guilt of some people and their crimes despicable. And yet they are every bit as human, just as their victim was. Were the Black Panthers back in the 70's wrong to defend themselves from the police? Were the Homestead strikers wrong to shoot back at murderous Pinkertons? Were the Minneapolis Teamsters wrong to tussle with the police trying to crush their strike? Were the miners in the Battle of Blair Mountain wrong to face down the national guard? These were law and order issues after all.

Taking life is not an act that should be condoned by any truly civilised society. In fact, participation in the killing of animals for any reason other than for eating meat, is unworthy of a civilised individual IMO.

Law should not imitate nature and its despicable acts , law should improve nature.