On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, denis bider wrote:
>
> Sure, there are gangs and lunatics, and they have illegal guns. But they
> don't shoot people all over the place - in fact, gangs very rarely shoot
> anyone outside of their circles at all
Same in the U.S. Most shootings are drug and/or gang related, and the
police frequently only do a cursory investigation in these cases.
> But it doesn't happen; we simply don't have a national
> culture of shooting each other. The police very rarely use their weapons,
> even in extreme cases, and each bullet is accounted for. And that's even
> with our police being somewhat corrupt - there are reports that some of them
> take bribes to allow some people to do things they shouldn't, but I haven't
> heard of a police officer to shoot a person that is anything less than an
> arrogant, widely known and notorious criminal.
You watch too much TV/movies. The same applies to the U.S. Most police
officers will go an entire career without having to shoot anyone. As for
police corruption, it is like politician corruption -- it happens
everywhere.
> In particular, your argument about someone protecting themselves with a gun
> while the police "raid his house with a swat team" is, well, far off. I
> think your swat teams are expert enough that no one will survive shooting
> back against them.
But what do you know? You clearly don't have the experience to make such a
determination of possibility regarding these things -- perhaps you should
leave such determinations to people that do. What you believe may seem
true in principle, but in practice there have been many times where
individuals with guns *have* successfully fended off a police raid and
lived to tell about it.
> If they want to shoot you, they can do it anyway -
> pretending a gun provides any real protection against the police is an
> illusion. The only thing you might be able to do with it is kill a few good
> police officers before they put a bullet in your head for doing so.
If they are kicking in your door for reasons that make one's shooting at
them a defensible action, then I would question just how "good" those
officers were that you killed. After all, if they were willing to kick in
your door and shoot you on whatever illegal basis, then they don't meet
my definition of "good". In the long run, justice is better served if a
few officers take a bullet for doing something patently illegal/stupid
that has the strong potential for killing another human being.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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