Horses Thief Shot and Killed in Utah

[barmar]

Ordinary citizens (which includes me) are bound to make these kinds of mistakes in these situations. That is a good reason to only allow people who are trained for these kind of situations (i.e. the police) to use fire arms against other people.

Which leads to "If it's a crime to own a gun, only criminals will have guns", which puts the criminals are at a distinct advantage.

 

However, I believe statistics show that most gun violence from ordinary citizens is not self-protection. It's either accidents, crimes of passion (e.g. domestic violence), or premeditated.

[mikeh]

 

 

But let me say this from a completely different perspective: If I would be the shooter, I would feel incredibly bad, since I made a big mistake. My big mistake is that I gave the carjacker the opportunity to get at me, close enough for me to lose control of the situation. (If I would have had control of the situation, I would have shot in the leg, the man would still live and I probably still would feel bad, wondering if there wouldn't have been a way to avoid injuring the guy.)

 

 

 

Rik

A couple of comments.

 

I am not someone who owns or has practiced with a handgun. My knowledge here is theoretical, and based on information I have learned from people who train police officers in the use of firearms, and reading studies by medical/psychological experts on what happens to people in high-stress situations, such as using deadly force in a confrontation.

 

I understand that even highly trained police officers will have trouble shooting accurately in such a situation. Shooting inaccurately is problematic not merely because one may not stop one's assailant (and stopping is the object, not killing....killing is sort of the usual result of stopping) but also because one might well miss, and it is usually impossible to be sure that the bullet that misses will pose no threat to innocent bystanders.

 

Accordingly, soldiers and police officers get the same training in where to aim: the centre of the visible mass....i.e., in the usual course, the torso...the chest. This delivers maximum stopping power while a near miss will at least likely strike the person somewhere.

 

The notion that anyone would be able to shoot at a leg or an arm, in these dynamic situations, is unrealistic. If it is unrealistic for well-trained military and police personnel, I would respectfully suggest that it is unrealistic for a civilian. The movies and television shows do a terrible job in this regard. In cop shows, police officers routinely put their guns down when told to do so (usually by a bad guy who has a gun to the head of another cop/innocent victim), and often hit exactly what they are aiming at...shooting weapons out of the hands of the bad guys, or hitting them in the leg, etc. Neither is likely to ever happen in real life.

 

If one is going to shoot someone because one thinks that person is a real threat to one's physical safety, or that of others, then one shoots to stop the person. A bullet in the arm or even the leg (depending on what the bullet strikes) may not even slow down someone high on adrenalin, let alone other substances.

 

In addition, the notion that one can stay far enough away that one can 'control' the situation makes the idea that one could hit a moving target, like the leg of someone in motion, even more problematic. According to the experts I have consulted (I do police use of force litigation, amongst other matters), even someone who is an ace on the range is likely to have physiological effects from stress that will make accuracy more challenging that usual when in a confrontation.

 

That's why 'if' the thief was out of the vehicle and charging the shooter, then I think the shooting was, at that moment, justified.

 

The idea that it was ok for the shooter to be armed in the first place, or that it was ok for him to intervene with his weapon, appalls me. I am glad I don't live in a society that has rules or attitudes like that. I say that even tho, were I to be in a similar situation, there is some chance that I would, in the moment, think otherwise. However, how one thinks in a stressful situation ought not to be the foundation of how our society is structured.

 

If someone killed my wife, I suspect that I would, in the short term, want to see that person suffer in the worst ways possible, including allowing me to kill that person. However, I wouldn't want to live in a society that permitted/condoned that sort of behaviour. That is why I find appeals to 'what would you do?' to be misguided. It is precisely because, in the heat of the moment, that we are morally impaired, that I think that the US attitude to weapons is so appalling.

[mike777]

I always find it interesting that so many citizens in places such as Western Europe who have been overrun by fascists in our families lifetime have so little interest in weapons training. Europe has been attacked yet again by fascists today and the response is slight. I mean a plane was shot out of the sky, I plane full of Dutch. The response borders on pacifism. I sometimes wonder if it is a form of shellshock from seeing such destruction up close that people just rather not deal with it.

 

Yet here in America there seems almost a love affair with guns and weapons by so many despite being in a state of virtually constant warfare since 1776. Perhaps because in our lifetime while we have family members who fight and some who get injured or die, the destruction feels far away until we are caught in a riot or attend the funeral. Our response is to buy or think about buying weapons.

[mikeh]

Which leads to "If it's a crime to own a gun, only criminals will have guns", which puts the criminals are at a distinct advantage.

 

 

 

This argument is b.s.

 

Most gun violence is either domestic or criminal on criminal or involves children.

 

If a civilian is mugged at gunpoint, virtually every law enforcement expert, even in the trigger-happy USA, espouses compliance....don't pull one's own gun and try to be a hero....give the person what they want....virtually nobody gets shot in these situations unless the victim escalates. The mugger isn't some random psycho out to kill....the mugger is probably someone whose thinking is impaired by alcohol or drugs and/or desperate for some money. So the notion that the mugger has an advantage if the victim has no gun is nonsense: the victim is more likely to be killed if he or she has a gun, and tries to use it.

 

The more prevalent is civilian gun ownership, the easier it becomes for criminals to get guns. A routine B & E, of the kind that happens in Canada and the US, is far more likely to lead to theft of firearms in the US than in Canada.

 

Accidental deaths occur at a staggering rate in the US. Children kill children. A sheriff, who slept with his glock under his pillow, 'accidentally' pulled the trigger while 'asleep', shooting his wife in the head. A young girl, taken to a shooting range as a present, shoots and kills her instructor while using an automatic weapon.

 

Give the f*cking criminals an advantage! Guess what? Gun-related deaths and injuries will plummet.

[mike777]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

 

Interesting fact 61% of gun deaths are suicides.

 

"...Gun-related violence is most common in poor urban areas and frequently associated with gang violence, often involving male juveniles or young adult males..."[

 

 

"The Congressional Research Service in 2009 estimated there were 310 million firearms in the U.S., not including weapons owned by the military. 114 million of these were handguns, 110 million were rifles, and 86 million were shotguns.[11] In that same year, the Census bureau stated the population of people in the U.S. at 306 million.[12]"

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As far as the entire issue of gun/weapons training I think it depends.

Having lived in a country that has been at war basically my entire life I think it is important. However if you live in a country that does not fight or at the very least fights very very little I think it is much less important.

[Trinidad]

Nothing stops ordinary citizens from getting training in how to use guns.

This shows the wrong way to think. It is not about the training how to use guns. Any moron can learn how to maintain a gun, keep it clean, store it safely, load it, aim and pull the trigger, and do that in a safe way. It's not rocket science.

 

It's about training how to keep your cool in a stressful situation, a situation that could develop into a situation where someone ends up dead.

 

An analogy:

Most adults will be able to learn how to drive a car. - Most adults will be able to learn how to fire a gun.

To drive that car in traffic, you will need additional training. - To use that gun safely when hunting, you will need additional training.

To use a car in high-speed police chase requires even more training. - To use a gun to stop a criminal requires even more training.

 

An ordinary citizen is not trained on how to deal with criminals. He doesn't know how criminals think and how they might behave. A properly trained police officer does know that and knows procedures that are designed to prevent anybody from getting killed. Putting an untrained, ordinary citizen with a gun in a dangerous stressful situation is pretty silly, IMnsHO.

 

Rik

[kenberg]

Taking a break from chores I sat back to do a thought experiment. The day before the Baltimore riots my wif Becky went with friends to hear the Baltimore Symphony. The locatins were not all that far apart. Imagine they were the riots were the same day, imagine that after the performance Becky and her friends became aware of the problem. So far this is not too demanding on the imagination. But now I try to imagine Becky announcing "Ladies, it's no problem, I have my Glock in my purse and it's loaded."

 

I'm still working on trying to bring this image into focus.

[mike777]

Taking a break from chores I sat back to do a thought experiment. The day before the Baltimore riots my wif Becky went with friends to hear the Baltimore Symphony. The locatins were not all that far apart. Imagine they were the riots were the same day, imagine that after the performance Becky and her friends became aware of the problem. So far this is not too demanding on the imagination. But now I try to imagine Becky announcing "Ladies, it's no problem, I have my Glock in my purse and it's loaded."

 

I'm still working on trying to bring this image into focus.

 

Interesting. Having lived through 2 riots, one Chicago, one LA and seeing the fires burning in the distance, yet close to enough to have the smoke seep into the home is scary.

 

Unrelated by having someone close to you raped and another mugged several times tends to bring the violence closer to home.

 

For many the thought of having a locked and loaded in the purse with little to no training is a scary thought. If it were my sister or other females who served in the armed forces perhaps less scary.

[kenberg]

For me the scary part would be thinking that the Glock would make her, or anyone, safer. Actually the route home would not have encountered rioters, but imagine that it did for the sake of the fantasy.

 

I am aware of instances where just such an error (not fatal) has been made: Doing X would be unsafe but I got me a gun so what's the problem?

 

The way this fantasy came to mind is that I was thinking that in my entire life there has never been an instance where I would have been helped even a little by having a gun. So, to check on this, I let my mind wander, Becky's excursion downtown came to mind, and I still think that my initial thought is true.

 

Several things:

 

If we owned a Glock, Becky would not have had it with her.

 

If I had accompanied here, I would not have had it with me. Who takes a gun to the symphony?

 

More to the point, if I were with her and had my gun with me, would it be safer to stay put in the Symphony Hall or to go out and shoot it out with the rioters?

 

Imo, one of the biggest dangers of having a gun is that it can give a very false illusion of safety.

[mike777]

For me the scary part would be thinking that the Glock would make her, or anyone, safer. Actually the route home would not have encountered rioters, but imagine that it did for the sake of the fantasy.

 

I am aware of instances where just such an error (not fatal) has been made: Doing X would be unsafe but I got me a gun so what's the problem?

 

The way this fantasy came to mind is that I was thinking that in my entire life there has never been an instance where I would have been helped even a little by having a gun. So, to check on this, I let my mind wander, Becky's excursion downtown came to mind, and I still think that my initial thought is true.

 

Several things:

 

If we owned a Glock, Becky would not have had it with her.

 

If I had accompanied here, I would not have had it with me. Who takes a gun to the symphony?

 

More to the point, if I were with her and had my gun with me, would it be safer to stay put in the Symphony Hall or to go out and shoot it out with the rioters?

 

Imo, one of the biggest dangers of having a gun is that it can give a very false illusion of safety.

 

Yes you make a very important point. Having a gun gives a very false illusion of safety. That is the key debate. If true that pretty much ends the discussion.

 

Of course if having a gun, I mean anyone somewhere having a gun for any reason does increase safety then the debate is back on. Then we can agree that a gun can somehow or someway increase safety at some level for some people.

 

I do think it is important we broaden the discussion to the world not just a tiny tiny part of Symphony Hall MD. But to answer your specific question I would not be surprised if someone in their car or purse brings one on their next trip.

 

Keep in mind many many people keep trying to bring guns and knifes on airplanes

[Trinidad]

Accordingly, soldiers and [edit by Trinidad]American[/edit by Trinidad] police officers get the same training in where to aim: the centre of the visible mass....i.e., in the usual course, the torso...the chest.

I can assure you that this is not universal. Police officers in the Netherlands are instructed to stand still and aim for the legs in most situations, even if the situation might be life threatening. About a year or so ago, a Dutch police officer was convicted for not following this instruction (which had resulted in him killing someone). The outcome of the investigation was that the police officer had every reason to shoot, but not the way he did it.

 

I would think that here it would be very difficult to commit suicide by COP: You'll get properly injured, but the probability that you are getting killed is small.

 

Rik

[mike777]

I can assure you that this is not universal. Police officers in the Netherlands are instructed to stand still and aim for the legs in most situations, even if the situation might be life threatening. About a year or so ago, a Dutch police officer was convicted for not following this instruction (which had resulted in him killing someone). The outcome of the investigation was that the police officer had every reason to shoot, but not the way he did it.

 

I would think that here it would be very difficult to commit suicide by COP: You'll get properly injured, but the probability that you are getting killed is small.

 

Rik

 

It is estimated roughly 50% of the deaths are "suicide by cop".

 

In the usa cops are trained to shoot to kill. If they shoot, they shoot to kill. The surprise is how often the guy does not die.

 

I am old enough to remember the days when cops shouted stop or I will shoot! Today they cant do that the vast majority of the time. So a lot more people run.

 

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btw please keep in mind that many of these protests and riots are over cops murdering young people, not shooting or killing but that the cops are murderers. The govt is murdering young people, young males and then covers it up.

[blackshoe]

This shows the wrong way to think.

You can take the idea, Rik, that you have any right at all to tell me how to think, and stick it where the sun don't shine.

[mikeh]

You can take the idea, Rik, that you have any right at all to tell me how to think, and stick it where the sun don't shine.

I think it is pretty clear, from all of your wc postings, that you are not the type of person who will ever try to appreciate the point of view of those with whom you disagree, so I doubt that Rik was actually trying to tell 'you' how to think. I suspect that he was pointing out that your proposition that there is nothing to prevent ordinary citizens getting training in how to use guns is not a useful contribution to the discussion taking place in this thread, for the reasons he went on to elaborate....reasons that, to no-one's surprise, I imagine, you don't bother addressing.

 

While there is some anecdotal evidence that having a firearm and being trained in how to operate it has resulted in some innocent people successfully avoiding being injured or killed, my understanding is that on the whole the possession of concealed but lawful handguns is not a positive factor in the safety of people in the US.

 

People who die through the accidental use of guns, people who die because a normally rational law-abiding person got caught up in road rage, people who die because some drunk/stoned person at a social event thinks he has been disrespected, people who die because their pulling a gun caused a situation to escalate, and so on....the deaths of these people are not made desirable merely because once in a while a violent criminal is shot to death.

 

Evidence is usually anathema to ideologues, so I don't expect that evidence will get you to change your mind anymore than having Rik offer a point of view will lead you to entertain the notion that you may be mistaken.

 

Otoh, show me evidence that there is a positive correlation between wide-spread public gun possession and a reduction in gun-related deaths, and I would be happy to reconsider my opinion. Oh....there isn't any? I wonder why.

[mike777]

"Gun violence in America has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, and the number of murders committed with a firearm is down too, though guns are still by far the leading type of crime weapon, according to a new report from the Justice Department..."

 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/07/18108298-gun-violence-in-us-has-fallen-dramatically-over-past-20-years-justice-dept-report-finds?lite

 

Murders committed with a gun dropped 39 percent to 11,101 in 2011, from a high of 18,253 in 1993, according to the report

 

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-----Gun ownership is now back at the low point it reached in 2010: Only 32 percent of Americans own a firearm or live with someone who does, compared with about half the population in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS--------------------

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Aopaoza1neLBdZrEAg8SrcCbvZx4?fr=yfp-t-901-s&toggle=1&fp=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&p=gun%20deaths%20over%20the%20last%2010%20years

 

 

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The Congressional Research Service in 2009 estimated there were 310 million firearms in the U.S., not including weapons owned by the military. 114 million of these were handguns, 110 million were rifles, and 86 million were shotguns.[11] In that same year, the Census bureau stated the population of people in the U.S. at 306 million.[12]"

[barmar]

"Gun violence in America has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, and the number of murders committed with a firearm is down too, though guns are still by far the leading type of crime weapon, according to a new report from the Justice Department..."

I think crime in general has dropped in the past few decades, and I think improvements in law enforcement procedures (e.g. ComStat) are considered partly to blame.

[barmar]

Yes you make a very important point. Having a gun gives a very false illusion of safety. That is the key debate. If true that pretty much ends the discussion.

Indeed, one of the reasons the incident in the OP is "news" is that successfully using a gun to stop a crime is relatively rare.

[hrothgar]

 

 

If I had accompanied here, I would not have had it with me. Who takes a gun to the symphony?

 

 

You never know when you might need to return fire with some libtard woodwind...

[blackshoe]

Indeed, one of the reasons the incident in the OP is "news" is that successfully using a gun to stop a crime is relatively rare.

Or at least reporting of same is relatively rare.

[Winstonm]

Indeed, one of the reasons the incident in the OP is "news" is that successfully using a gun to stop a crime is relatively rare.

 

In this case, did it stop a crime or escalate it to a different level?

[mikeh]

I think crime in general has dropped in the past few decades, and I think improvements in law enforcement procedures (e.g. ComStat) are considered partly to blame.

I read Freakonomics when it came out and the authors had an interesting, provocative take on the main cause of the drop in crime recorded in the US in, iirc, the 1990s, and continuing, I assume, to this date.

 

They said that a major cause was the decision in Roe v Wade.

 

Like it or not, the reality is that women in poor socio-economic circumstances are historically more likely than their wealthier counterparts to have children who grow up to act out in a criminal fashion. Fetal-alcohol syndrome is more prevalent with poorly educated people than with well-educated people. Poor diet, the same. Gang membership, the same. Economic opportunity...the inverse.

 

And so on.

 

Prior to Roe v Wade, wealthy women had better and safer access to abortion (or birth control, for that matter) than did the poor. Roe v Wade resulted in a significant increase in the abortion rates in the lower socio-economic classes, such that 16-20 years later there were literally hundreds of thousands fewer adolescent men from impoverished families than would otherwise have been the case, and while young males are not the only perpetrators of violent crime, they are the most frequent.

 

In addition, it is generally true that the propensity of males to commit acts of violence diminishes with age. The US is not alone. amongst western countries, in experiencing broad demographic changes. Some parts of society still have lots of kids, but amongst most Americans (and Canadians, Frenchmen, etc) it is rare to have as many as 4 children, let alone the 8-12 that were commonplace 80 years ago (tho back then it wasn't unusual for a few of the kids to die in infancy).

 

I very much doubt that the crime rates have dropped primarily, if at all, because of improved policing.

[blackshoe]

They said that a major cause was the decision in Roe v Wade.

Interesting.

[kenberg]

I read Freakonomics when it came out and the authors had an interesting, provocative take on the main cause of the drop in crime recorded in the US in, iirc, the 1990s, and continuing, I assume, to this date.

 

They said that a major cause was the decision in Roe v Wade.

 

Like it or not, the reality is that women in poor socio-economic circumstances are historically more likely than their wealthier counterparts to have children who grow up to act out in a criminal fashion. Fetal-alcohol syndrome is more prevalent with poorly educated people than with well-educated people. Poor diet, the same. Gang membership, the same. Economic opportunity...the inverse.

 

And so on.

 

Prior to Roe v Wade, wealthy women had better and safer access to abortion (or birth control, for that matter) than did the poor. Roe v Wade resulted in a significant increase in the abortion rates in the lower socio-economic classes, such that 16-20 years later there were literally hundreds of thousands fewer adolescent men from impoverished families than would otherwise have been the case, and while young males are not the only perpetrators of violent crime, they are the most frequent.

 

In addition, it is generally true that the propensity of males to commit acts of violence diminishes with age. The US is not alone. amongst western countries, in experiencing broad demographic changes. Some parts of society still have lots of kids, but amongst most Americans (and Canadians, Frenchmen, etc) it is rare to have as many as 4 children, let alone the 8-12 that were commonplace 80 years ago (tho back then it wasn't unusual for a few of the kids to die in infancy).

 

I very much doubt that the crime rates have dropped primarily, if at all, because of improved policing.

 

Without delving deeply into it, I have always been wary of Freakonomics. My first thought on reading here about Roe v Wade and its effect on crime was "Rally? Has there been a reduction in the number of single mothers living in poverty since Roe v Wade?"

The Wikipedia has a long entry on the book and on this aspect of it.. Here is a part, admittedly only a part:

 

 

In November 2005, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economist Christopher Foote and his research assistant Christopher Goetz, published a working paper,^[11] in which they argued that the results in Donohue and Levitt's abortion and crime paper were due to statistical errors made by the authors: the omission of state-year interactions and the use of the total number of arrests instead of the arrest rate in explaining changes in the murder rate. When the corrections were made, Foote and Goetz argued that abortion actually increased violent crime instead of decreasing it and did not affect property crime. They even concluded that the majority of women who had abortions in the 1970s were middle class whites rather than low income minorities as Levitt stated; this was, they stated, because white middle class women had the financial means for an abortion. The Economist remarked on the news of the errors that "for someone of Mr Levitt's iconoclasm and ingenuity, technical ineptitude is a much graver charge than moral turpitude. To be politically incorrect is one thing; to be simply incorrect quite another."^[12] In January 2006, Donohue and Levitt published a response,^[13] in which they admitted the errors in their original paper but also pointed out Foote and Goetz's correction was flawed due to heavy attenuation bias. The authors argued that, after making necessary changes to fix the original errors, the corrected link between abortion and crime was now weaker but still statistically significant, contrary to Foote and Goetz's claims. Foote and Goetz, however, soon produced a rebuttal of their own and showed that even after analyzing the data using the methods that Levitt and Donohue recommend, the data does not show a positive correlation between abortion rates and crime rates. ^[14] They are quick to point out that this does not necessarily disprove Levitt's thesis, however, and emphasize that with data this messy and incomplete, it is in all likelihood not even possible to prove or disprove Donohue and Levitt's conclusion.

 

This excerpt touches a bit on what I give as my initial reaction. I'll phrase my question in a way that presumably could be answered: Count all mothers between the age of, say, 25 and 30 in 2014, count all single mothers in the same age group (whatever age group seems right, I don't care) living below some definition of poverty, say living below 1.5 times the official poverty line. Divide the latter by the former. Repeat this calculation for mothers in 1970. Which ratio is larger? I confess I do ot know, but my guess is that the 2014 number is larger. Yes, I am guessing. I don't know.

 

It seems to me that the problem of single mothers raising their children in poverty has gotten worse, not better. I can think of few things that I would rather be wrong about.

 

Added: Maybe compare 2010 with 1970 since these are census years. I'm not fussy as long as it is a good faith effort to get at the truth.

 

More added: Probably it is better to count kids rather than mothers.It's the kids who are at issue.

 

And another add: I see I referred to single mothers living in poverty and the stuff from Freak didn't. In the case of children having a tough time growing up, I do think that in poverty with one parent is tougher than in poverty with two parents, but I am ope to hearing about both.

[mike777]

I am just saying that there are more than 300 millions guns, more guns than people in the USA and there has been a drop in gun violence, gun deaths.

 

you can debate cause and effect.

 

I believe there were around 700,000 in prison in the early 70's, today over 2 million.

 

Milwaukee DA did a major effort to reduce convictions for low level drug issues. Crime rates went up, number of people in prison went down.

 

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keep in mind there is the whole other issue of guns/weapons training and that is the issue of people not trusting governments

Look at Asia and Africa and around the world.

 

Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain were not tht long ago.

China and Russia are huge countries run by fascists.

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People forget there were concentration camps, active concentration camps in Central Europe in the 1990's, yes 1990's.

 

Guns/weapon training is not an issue just limited to the USA though there does seem to be a love affair with this issue, a passion more here than in most of the world.

[hrothgar]

FWIW, the most intriguing studies that I have seen on the declining crime rates have focused on environment lead contamination.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline