Activists have said for years (decades even) that more training does not work. There is very little evidence that training in the way that some politicians have called for affects policing at all. Cop City training in particular is not even that, its not for bias training or anything, it’s very much more akin to military training.
Activists goals have always been for redirecting some police funding to education, community outreach, different divisions for different problems, etc. There are some that push for abolition but the overall goal of those who actually have been doing it for years has been to address the underlying problems and not to throw more money at an armed force with immunity.
I think American cops are trigger happy, but don’t throw around assertions about “underlying problems” without evidence. Lots of places that don’t have a fraction of the “education,” etc., of the Atlanta metro area, and also have cops that are trigger happy as fuck, don’t have the same level of disruption in the social order. Watch a Bollywood cop movie sometime—some of the scenes of “good cops” killing “bad guys” without due process would make a Republican uneasy. Nonetheless, Atlanta has a homicide rate 5-10 times higher than Delhi, India. Hell, the homicide rate in some parts of America are higher than the death rates of American soldiers during the Iraq war: https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/parts-of-chicago-more-da...
American social disorder is a unique phenomenon that cannot be waved away as being caused by poverty, lack of education, etc. And frankly it’s kind of offensive to make that comparison. Poor, uneducated people around the world manage to maintain more orderly communities than Americans who are vastly more privileged and affluent in comparison.
Despite having more guns, Idaho has a homicide rate of 2.2 per 100,000, which is only a little higher than Belgium, and about the same as Canada, and a little lower than India.
By contrast, Puerto Rico had fewer guns than India, but a homicide rate of 19 per 100,000, more than six times higher than India. Disarmed Puerto Rico has a homicide rate eight times higher than heavily armed Idaho.
Clinging to the belief that it’s guns rather than social factors is just willful denial.
Homicide rate doesn’t actually have much to do with population density. Boise has a population density of 2,800 per square mile and similar homicide rate to the state as a whole. Urban Boise is actually slightly denser than urban San Juan, Puerto Rico, while being heavily armed and far safer. Boise is also similarly dense to Atlanta while being much safer.
> Clinging to the belief that it’s guns rather than social factors is just willful denial.
That's a false dichotomy — sure, social factors play an important role, but it's a multi-variate phenomenon, and you seem to want to deny that gun-ownership rates have anything to do with it.
You haven’t presented any evidence that guns are a major factor after adjusting for social factors. The US also has the highest rates of fatherless households in the world, while India has one of the lowest. Maybe that’s the reason for the difference in homicide rates.
We've spoken? You have the advantage of me — unlike you, I use my real name online.
But you're very-much mistaken about what I think: As near as I can tell, the causes of crime are markedly more complicated than the caricature you just attributed to me.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here. Regardless of what you're battling for or against, it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Estimated number of civilian firearms per 100 people and gun deaths per 100000:
- El Salvador: 5.8, 78.52
- Brazil: 8.6, 23.93
- Colombia: 10.10, 20.38
- U.S.: 120.5, 12.21
- Mexico: 15, 11.55
If anything it seems like proximity to cartels is the most likely predictor of gun homicide rates
Meanwhile Switzerland has 27.6 guns per 100 civilians and 2.64 gun homicides per 100,000. So not sure what to conclude about gun ownership and homicides. Note that gun deaths not equal to gun homicides since deaths includes suicide and the CDC reports these items combined. If you wanted to discuss gun suicides that's fine but note this was about homicide.
> Meanwhile Switzerland has 27.6 guns per 100 civilians and 2.64 gun homicides per 100,000. So not sure what to conclude about gun ownership and homicides.
Another data point: Switzerland has strict gun laws that mostly ban the kind of military-grade firearms we see used in mass murders in the U.S. (and yes, some Latin American countries), and smaller guns require permits. [0]
More: "Switzerland has a stunningly high rate of gun ownership — here's why it doesn't have mass shootings ... Unlike the US, Switzerland has mandatory military service for men. The government gives all men between the ages of 18 and 34 deemed 'fit for service' a pistol or a rifle and training on how to use them. After they've finished their service, the men can typically buy and keep their service weapons, but they have to get a permit for them." [1]
You must have overlooked the word "mostly" in my comment.
The first link in my post is to an official Swiss government site. If you want to quibble about what constitutes a "military-grade" firearm, that's certainly your privilege.
Yes, you can follow that link and find that you are completely wrong. Please name one weapon that is “military grade”, commonly available in US, but banned in Switzerland. You can’t, because you’re wrong.
From the Swiss government Web page I linked: Banned weapons include "semi-automatic firearms with a large magazine" — as just one example, recall that the Las Vegas shooter used "a large quantity of ammunition in special high-capacity magazines holding up to 100 cartridges each."
No, because this doesn’t ban anything that’s in common use in US. The 30 rounds magazines in common use in US do not count as “large magazines” for the purposes of that Swiss law, because these are normal capacity magazines. As I said, you are completely wrong about this.
BTW, did you also overlook the part about Switzerland requiring military training and service for (essentially) all able-bodied men in a certain age range? Whereas in the U.S., pretty much any untrained bozo who never served can buy high-powered weaponry and strut around cosplaying in camo and body armor, ostentatiously toting the weaponry and shouting belligerent slogans. (It's been my untutored conjecture that most such folks are trying to compensate for deep-seated fears that they don't really measure up in the masculinity department, although there also seems to be a certain percentage of sociopaths in the mix as well.)
No, it is you who keep moving the goalposts. The original claim was:
> Switzerland has strict gun laws that mostly ban the kind of military-grade firearms we see used in mass murders in the U.S.
And this is clearly false: you have not shown a single “military grade firearm” that we see used in mass murders in the US, but which is banned in Switzerland. All mass murders in US that I know of have used normal capacity magazines, and these are not banned in Switzerland. Your best argument here is that there might have been some mass murder in the US that used some weapon banned in Switzerland, but this is very far cry from your original goalpost, which is that Switzerland mostly bans guns used in mass murders in US: it overwhelmingly does not.
> BTW, did you also overlook the part about Switzerland requiring military training and service for (essentially) all able-bodied men in a certain age range?
Not sure what it has to do with the discussion, which was about clearly and explicitly false claim you made and apparently continue to hold on to, despite utter lack of evidence. Military service is not a prerequisite for gun ownership in Switzerland in general (it is for some guns, though).
> although there also seems to be a certain percentage of sociopaths in the mix as well
If we are playing armchair psychologist here, well, I could say something here about social orientation of people knowingly spreading verifiable falsehoods on the internet to further their ideology and agenda.
"Utter lack of evidence"? You sound like Texas's far-right Senate Republicans who this past weekend acquitted state AG Dan Paxton in his impeachment trial for bribery and other offenses, on grounds of a supposed lack of evidence — even though Paxton's whistleblowers and other accusers were (AFAIK) all Republicans and the impeachment had been voted by an overwhelming majority in the GOP-dominated Texas House, with a solid majority of House Republicans voting in favor of impeachment.
"Utter lack of evidence"? As the hoary old chestnut goes: Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.
Yes, you have not given a single example of “the kind of military-grade firearms we see used in mass murders in the U.S” that’s banned by Switzerland. This is what “utter lack of evidence” means. The fact that instead of doing that, you segue into some unrelated contemporary political drama, is really telling.
That phrase, "utter lack of evidence": I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'm done trying to argue with you — you clearly see only what you want to see.
And nice try with the "some unrelated contemporary political drama" — it's all of a piece, with far-right Republicans trying to do a Cardassian "there are five lights" routine (from ST:TNG).
So are typhoid and cholera — and civilized societies enforce reasonable laws to prevent them from disrupting life.
BTW, in case you're wondering: I'm a Texan who has owned multiple firearms for pretty much my entire adult life — I was taught to shoot at about age eight by my dad, with more-advanced instruction a decade or so later, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
And both typhoid and cholera have a nasty way of reappearing when natural disasters occur and sanitation takes a hit.
But hey, since we can't ever achieve 100% success for all time, then we should just throw up our hands and learn to live with 100% failure, right? Yeah, that's the ticket ....
Is it working? San Francisco (and other cities) has been running such "experiment" and clearly it's becoming a frightening drug hot spot (among other problems).
When people say "more training" they're referring to De-escalation and crisis management training. Not a paramilitary training facility for teach cops tactical assault, and breach and raid techniques.
Cops have created a climate and situations where they benefit from that style of training. Conducting no-knock raids and other paramilitary operations for nonviolent crimes is an unnecessary escalation.
Warrior training and being trained that everyone is an adversary with execution being the go to option isn't normal and shouldn't be ingrained in folks whose day-to-day is largely nonviolent encounters.
It's time we stop living in or creating a fantasy world where every encounter with the public is an opportunity for a gun battle. Perhaps if they were trained in deescalation and not told to fear every person they encounter as potential threat then they wouldn't be perpetually afraid for their lives while performing routine interactions with the public?
We don't need to be investing heavily in training cops for an exception encounter, we need to be providing them the training and tools necessary for their day to day duties. As a follow on, the public wouldn't be afraid for their own safety when having to interact with police.
> yeah, except the "exception" means you don't come home to your family that day.
So I guess we should be giving every citizen that same paramilitary training because they have a higher chance of being killed by a cop than a cop does by them.
> Up a level: why were "activists" protesting Cop City at all? I thought "more training" was the thing people were always agitating for.
If this is an honest question, it must be coming from a lack of knowledge about policing in the U.S. for the last two decades:
After 9/11-- and especially after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq-- there was an escalation in militarized police tactics, equipment and grants. Some of this started in the preceding decades during the war on drugs. But anti-terrorism federal grants and many other sources of funding for militarization training and equipment flowed like rivers post 9/11. This funding was-- and mostly still is-- available to police from the largest cities to the smallest municipality. This and the war on drugs have become a sizable chunk of police department budgets. If you go to a town of 1,000 people and see a local police humvee vehicle tooling around, they got it at least in part through some militarization or anti-drug grant. Possibly both. (Note: if there's a dog in the humvee it's probably the latter, which means the department has an ongoing obligation to show stats for how they've been using this equipment and dog in successful anti-drug efforts. Not sure what the obligations are for the anti-terror grants, though.)
By at least the 2010's, critics on both the left and right were speaking about the problems of this approach to policing. Essentially, a) it creates/exacerbates an "police vs. citizens" approach to policing that's at odds with the core goal of police being a community service for citizens, and b) there isn't enough time in a day nor money in a municipality to train police to do public safety and develop the skills necessary to competently use military anti-terrorism/anti-insurgency tactics and equipment.
The activists who aren't radical-- e.g., the ones who aren't anti-state-- typically want more (I'd say better) training on the public safety side of things. This means things like de-escalation techniques, outreach with citizens, partnering with social workers, detective work, etc.
What you will nearly never hear police reform activists in the U.S. agitating for is more militarization training and equipment for the police. That includes a number of the civil libertarians on the right.
Finally, I'll say that the activists I've read are convinced that Cop City is all about funding more militarized training of Atlanta PD. I don't know enough about the plans to know whether that's true or not. But the idea of activists pushing back against ostensible police militarization training/funding is in keeping with two decades of efforts on the left-- and right-- to protect the bill of rights in the 21st century.
> it must be coming from a lack of knowledge about policing in the U.S. for the last two decades
I think you're saying "doesn't agree with me." There's no lack of knowledge -- there's only a lack of indoctrination.
American cops are American cops. Crime spiked up until 1990 or so, then it was brought under control, and lately it's been spiking again. I think some people like you consider that a reasonable price to pay for whatever goals you're trying to achieve.
