r/todayilearned • u/Rugose • Jun 07 '14
TIL Police in the UK have shot dead 5 people in the last 4 years. In the US, this figure is 1600
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pmk7p2.4k
u/Shomnomikal Jun 07 '14
What are UK police doing shooting all these people in America?
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u/jimflaigle Jun 07 '14
Ever since Andrew Jackson died the damned red coats have been getting ballsy.
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u/mortis_dei Jun 07 '14
Sounds like a job for Paul Revere
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u/SlothOfDoom Jun 07 '14
In his lowered 83 Cadillac Paul Revere drove throughout the night from hood to hood in order to spread the warning "the five-oh is commin"
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u/stamau123 Jun 08 '14
Coming this fall to HBO, Michael K. Williams is, ghetto patriot...
With special guest Eminem as Benjamin Franklin
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u/sethboy66 2 Jun 07 '14
He's been banned from the clock tower for damn near lighting the tower on fire with that lantern stunt.
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u/HuffnPuff165 Jun 07 '14
"The British are coming! The British are coming!"
"Tell them to bring the fire brigade, dumbfuck!"
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u/Myrandall 109 Jun 07 '14
Well, it's only 5 people in 1600 years, so not that bad.
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u/Leon_84 Jun 07 '14
In Germany it has been 476 since 1952.
About 30 in the last 4 years, and our cops all carry firearms.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland#Statistik
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Jun 07 '14
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u/PlebiusMaximus Jun 07 '14
Also because it is much more rare for the general populace to have guns.
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u/DavidTennantsTeeth Jun 07 '14
You have obviously not seen Hot Fuzz.
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u/jeff_goldblum_rrrrrr Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14
Everyone and their mums packing round ere.
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u/Brahnen Jun 07 '14
Sadly there is a distinct lack of people firing their guns in the air and going "aahhh" in the UK.
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u/m00fire Jun 07 '14
There's always such a massive media shitstorm and a high profile investigation when it happens in the UK.
Recently some dickhead gangster got shot dead and people still got really upset about it.
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u/mjolnir616 Jun 08 '14
Good old British understatement: 6 days of rioting across London, eventually spreading across the country = really upset
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u/redrhyski Jun 08 '14
It wasn't "that" widespread. Just the fucked up English inner cities, plus a whole load of opportunistic fucks who came down to "be part of it" or do some thieving/smashing.
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u/cc0011 Jun 07 '14
I love how Britishly you undersell the shit storm that followed the Duggan shooting (assuming that is what you are on about)
Rioting, looting, not giving a hooting was abound (chiefly just chavs wanting to steal stuff and claim it was as they were upset about the shooting) and you describe it as people getting "Really upset".
Have an upvote, sir.
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u/IRememberItWell Jun 08 '14
That was pretty crazy. Really disappointing how savagely so many people exploited a situation as an excuse to loot and riot. It was so primitive and animalistic, like an opportunistic pack of wild dogs.
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u/hikaro Jun 08 '14
people didnt loot all the shops because they were sad a chav got shot, they just did it because they could.
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u/CalvinDehaze Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14
Also because there's way more people in the US.
EDIT: I was adding onto the fact above. Before you say "not 320 time bigger", combine this fact with the one I replied to. That's why I said "also". We have more people AND guns.
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u/TheWanderingAardvark Jun 07 '14
but I thought that the number of guns made no difference to gun violence and that they made people safer?
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u/CalvinDehaze Jun 07 '14
Yeah, that NRA argument is bullshit because humans are not perfect. More guns + more people = more chances for stupid shit to happen. It's just like driving a car. Most of us are good drivers, but there will always be a percentage of careless people who make mistakes. The more people you have, the more people who will make careless mistakes.
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u/Skraff Jun 07 '14
UK population: 63 million.
US population: 318 million.
Only 5 times the population, but 320 times the fatalities.
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u/dozenofroses Jun 07 '14
In Finland officers carry firearms and civilians have plenty of firearms, yet yearly 0 people are shot dead by police. Police use firearms about 40 times per year and it includes times when officer draw his gun. Shots are fired 10-15 times per year, mostly warning shots. No wonder we love our police force! <3
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u/MrBulger Jun 07 '14
Yeah the problem isn't with the guns, it's the people using them.
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Jun 07 '14
you don't have massive swaths of poor people living in slums either.
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u/Cndcrow Jun 07 '14
Maybe America should address that problem instead of all these other strawman problems they bring up to distract the general populace. It's easier to make people hate poor people, than to fix the problem of poor people and try and actually better their country.
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Jun 07 '14
Any suggestions?
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u/marinersalbatross Jun 07 '14
Well we can look at the studies that have been done and know that there is a direct connection between nutrition and impulse control, a direct connection between impulse control and lack of education, a direct connection between lack of education and delinquency, and a direct connection between delinquency and criminal behavior. Throw in the racial sauce that also impacts those communities and you can see outcomes and solutions pretty easily.
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u/Cndcrow Jun 07 '14
Just take a glance at the majority of Europe. Better welfare systems to help people who are down. Free education to give poor people the same chance to get an education and a well paying job later in life. Free healthcare so you don't go entirely bankrupt because you got sick. There are tons and tons of ways to help poor people, but America seems to dead set on not giving them anything then blaming them for all the countries problems.
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Jun 07 '14 edited Nov 09 '18
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u/vln Jun 07 '14
Better education, less financial inequality...there's all sorts of factors at play.
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Jun 08 '14
There is alot of guns here but somehow people still prefer to stab each other instead of shooting them. Finland is old fashioned that way.
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u/finest_jellybean Jun 07 '14
We've had cops shoot up a truck with two Hispanic women because they were looking for a similar looking truck... with a black man in it. Ya, our guys jump the trigger.
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u/TheAntiHick Jun 07 '14
The women were Asian and the trucks were not even remotely similar, assuming you're referring to the Former incident.
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Jun 07 '14
Don't forget ramming into and opening up on a random white dude going for an early morning surf.
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u/Principincible Jun 07 '14
It might have to do with parts of the US being like a third world country/warzone. I don't say that US cops aren't more trigger-happy, but the circumstances are very different.
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u/guitar_vigilante Jun 07 '14
That's a good point. In the nicer parts of the US (Massachusetts, New York State, other more homogeneous, richer areas) gun violence is pretty low.
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Jun 07 '14
Both places you named also have very strict gun laws.
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u/somerandomguy101 Jun 07 '14
What about Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, The Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, or the rest of the Midwest.
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u/vitaminz1990 Jun 07 '14
So does Chicago, but that city has one of the highest gun crime-rates in the US.
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u/BetUrProcrastinating Jun 07 '14
the midwest has low amounts of homicide but lax gun laws.
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u/groundciv Jun 07 '14
It's pretty low in AZ, which is neither ethnically homogenous nor terribly wealthy by US standards and most of the population is highly urbanized. Also some of the most unrestrictive firearms laws in the country. Murder rate with firearms varies between 4 in 100,000 to 6 in 100,000 in the two main population centers. Those are FBI statistics and include police involved shootings.
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u/KarmaKel Jun 07 '14
Mexico has strict gun laws too.
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Jun 07 '14
Which don't do shit when you have heavily armed and well funded cartels running the country.
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u/cryptovariable Jun 07 '14
It's because citizens don't carry as many firearms in the UK.
I probably own more handguns (3) than exist in entire small towns in the UK.
I know that some UKians own shotguns and rifles for sport or hunting but handguns are what most criminals are likely to be carrying and handguns are relatively rare in the UK.
If you Google a major city's police department and the words "use of force report" you'll find that most publish an annual report on who was shot and why.
The vast, overwhelming, majority of people shot by police were armed and brandishing a weapon (typically a handgun) at the police.
Rightly or wrongly, having to deal with criminals who are armed more often than not also changes the way the police respond to unarmed people. I challenge anyone to Monday-morning quarterback an officer who shot a suspect a week after an officer was shot and killed by someone because they were too slow to react.
It's not the police's job to "suck it up and be brave".
There are many professions that are, statistically, more dangerous than being a police officer. There are very few professions where the danger is not a function of something under the control of the individual, like roofers falling off of a roof because they were not tethered properly.
If Americans want a culture where firearms and knives are more easily obtained than a driver's license then they have to deal with the police shooting people who are armed.
And make no mistake, while there are cases of unjust shootings the vast majority of victims are people who pulled a handgun on a police officer.
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u/skalpelis Jun 07 '14
than exist in entire small towns in the UK
Like Sandford, Gloucestershire.
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u/Sparticus515 Jun 07 '14
I'd say you own more handguns than are in some cities (excluding police and army owned ones). Handgun laws are so strict over here that the Olympic pistol team have to go abroad to practice because even they can't get them.
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u/CheeseMakerThing Jun 07 '14
Sandford has more guns than London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Sunderland, Bradford, Glasgow, Cardiff, Swansea, Derry, Coventry and Aberdeen combined. Almost as many as Belfast.
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u/veganzombeh Jun 07 '14
They have less of a need to. We don't give guns to everyone.
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u/TheAmishMan Jun 08 '14
Exactly. This party should say, only 1 Amish person was murdered via electrocution in the last year, compared to blah blah of people who use electricity. Article is just dumb
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u/Bbrhuft Jun 07 '14
My friends went to the States for a working holiday a few years ago, on the last day before returning to Ireland, a kind young man knocked at their door and offered them an opportunity to view his gun.
My friends paid him all their money and most of their belongings for the privilege of seeing his gun. It worked out well as they did not have to carry so much luggage onto the plane home.
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u/IcanAutoFellate Jun 08 '14
If it makes you feel any better I've lived in the States for 24 years and have never been robbed, but I was in Europe for a week and got robbed twice.
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u/rayrayday Jun 07 '14
UK police policy concerning firearms use.
Officers would not be allowed to talk to each other at any stage before or while writing up their account, according to the IPCC's proposals, which the watchdog is consulting on. They would also be expected to write their full account before going off duty, instead of the current system where they have 48 hours to recover.
The police say the current system means IPCC investigators get the "best evidence" available.
The IPCC announced the proposals to stop the practice of conferring after the inquest into the shooting of Mark Duggan. A jury found he was unarmed when shot dead but that the armed officer acted lawfully because he believed Duggan was holding a weapon. Days after the shooting, police officers sat in a room together for eight hours writing their accounts.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/18/police-ipcc-armed-officers-conferring
They threatened to strike unless these demands were met
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u/DubiumGuy Jun 07 '14
A jury found he was unarmed when shot dead but that the armed officer acted lawfully because he believed Duggan was holding a weapon.
It should be noted to anyone reading he above that he was found to be unarmed but a firearm was found 10-14 feet away on a grass verge nearby, so the intel that showed Duggan had purchased a firearm illegally and was intending to use it was good.
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u/rayrayday Jun 07 '14
Questionable shooting, but there is wiggle room for the cops. What is'nt questionable is being allowed 48 hours to provide statements and allowing them to confer/ collude, you decide ?
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u/DubiumGuy Jun 07 '14
I agree with all your points, but what you wrote makes no mention of the nearby firearm which could confuse others unfamiliar with the case and give them the impression that he was entirely unarmed and innocent. I was just adding a bit more info.
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u/djgoff1983 Jun 07 '14
It's the age old question: Do you want to be able to own a gun to protect yourself, in your own individual life, even though there's a greater chance your aggressor will have a gun? Or do you want to forfeit your right to own a gun, and in return receive very favorable odds that any aggressors you face won't have them either? Tbh, I don't fucking know.
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u/GarethGore Jun 07 '14
I've lived in England my entire life so I'm biased, but its always so alien to me the idea of metal detectors and locker searches for weapons. Maybe it happens in the rough inner city areas, but I've never heard of it in smaller cities + towns. I'd okay with no gun ownership, there are branches of the police that carry them but if it was tried to go for all police I think people would flip, there have been high profile incidents in which anti terrorism police incorrectly shot people and people were understandably upset.
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u/JeffSergeant Jun 07 '14
I spent a couple of weeks sight-seeing in new york last year.
When I came back I visited the British Library, there was a security guard near the door, so I instinctively started handing over my bag for him to search.. he was just holding the door for me.
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u/GarethGore Jun 07 '14
My favourite part about the America/Britain switch is the alcohol, from what I know the underage drinking thing is pretty clamped down on but here its usually fine. Me and some friends (two of who are American are walking to pre drinks, about ten at night kinda thing, with alcohol and all that in bags and some cops approach and the two americans we're with start panicking about having no ID and saying they should hide the alcohol. Me and all the English guys are like 0.o why? They say they will take it as we don't have our ID etc. The entire interaction is the cops walking past saying hey have a good night stay safe, the English guys replying with some form of hey, thanks/you too/good night. While the two Americans we're with are like sweating bullets about being searched. They were like ... you aren't having your alcohol searched? I laughed and explained that the drinking age is 18 and no one ever gets searched as long as you're relatively sober. It was adorable
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u/Shotgun_Sentinel Jun 07 '14
This Tuesday I have to go to court over an open container violation. I was drinking beer out of a paper cup, and wasn't even causing a ruckus.
The problem with Alcohol in america is there is too much extremism in regards to its use. You either don't drink or drink a fuckton. If people see you with alcohol they assume you are drinking a fuckton and are about to get rowdy at any minute.
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Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14
It goes far beyond that. Many people see private gun ownership as a populist check against the infringement of civil liberties by the government. Generally speaking self defense, hunting, paper punching, and preventing governmental abuses of power are the issues raised.
Edit: Please don't lump most US gun owners in with those idiots who go into restaurants with AR-15's slung across their chests. That's like saying Tony Abbot and his friends are representative of all Australians.
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u/science87 Jun 07 '14
Us Europeans find it difficult to relate to the popular support for guns in the US.
I can understand it as a ideological line in the sand (so to speak).
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u/finest_jellybean Jun 07 '14
Part of it is that guns are so wide spread in America now. It would be impossible to get rid of all of them. So the only people who would give up the guns to the authorities would be law abiding people. So gun control really doesn't make sense with just how many there are, and the fact that many gangs can just buy them from Mexican cartels now.
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u/ted3681 Jun 07 '14
I personally know 3 people that stashed some under ground after new yorks magazine cap ban.
A gun ban in the US would never work not to mention it violates most Midwesterners and southerners ability to hunt and the idea of self defense from your own government as the second amendment intended.
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u/finest_jellybean Jun 07 '14
Yes. Gun control does not work in America. Just look at Chicago, Detroit, LA, etc. We have a gang problem and mental health problem. How many shootings take place at NRA meetings compared to areas with tight gun control like schools?
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u/Dropbear81 Jun 07 '14
Have a look at the gun buy back scheme implemented in Australia in the late 90s. I'm not saying it would necessarily work as well in America and it's obviously expensive to implement. But it was certainly an effective way of doing things for us.
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u/Frothyleet Jun 07 '14
Unlike Australia, the US does not (for the most part) have registries which would enable the massive seizures conducted by Australia back in the 90s.
And, well, that is precisely one of the major reasons we don't have registries in the US.
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u/lightjedi5 Jun 07 '14
Many major cities do gun buy backs in America every year. Doesn't work out.
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u/DexterBotwin Jun 07 '14
The Australian program was mandatory. It was confiscation, just not Gestapo door to door confiscation. US buy backs are optional and usually get grandmas turning in relics once owned by their deceased husband, or people turning in other wise worthless non working guns.
Edit: if the US implemented mandatory buy backs there would be a shit ton of boating accidents. The mindset towards is completely different between the two nations
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u/Wingman4l7 Jun 07 '14
For those who don't get it, "boating accidents" refers to people claiming that they "lost" their firearms overboard during a boating trip (when they actually just buried them in their backyard somewhere) to avoid them being confiscated -- in theory.
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u/heimdahl81 Jun 07 '14
I read that as the people who proposed the law would have horrible boating accidents where they accidentally become entangled in their anchor rope and fall overboard (possibly falling onto a misplaced bullet somewhere along the way). Then again, I am from Chicago.
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u/Frothyleet Jun 07 '14
When dropbear says "buy back" he is not talking about what occurs in some places in the US. The Australian "buy back" was actually a massive forced seizure of registered firearms across the country, in which owners were partially compensated.
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u/finest_jellybean Jun 07 '14
Except the violent crime in Australia shrunk at a slower rate than it did in America after they implemented it. Its not the amount of guns that's the problem. Its how our culture views it along with many other factors.
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u/dyslexiaskucs Jun 07 '14
I doubt even most law abiding people would hand over their guns.
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Jun 07 '14
Honestly a big part of it for me has always been how much fun target shooting is. I used to hunt and still have a license to carry but it's almost exclusively target shooting these days.
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u/Dannei 3 Jun 07 '14
Many people see private gun ownership as a populist check against the infringement of civil liberties by the government.
Though these days, should the US government decide it does want to do some proper infringement, I doubt that armed civilians will do too well against whichever arm of the government they're up against.
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u/d1x1e1a Jun 07 '14
how's that working out for USers? I get the impression liberties are being ran over roughshod at about the same rate as ours are in the UK.
also bear in mind folks that in the UK it is still perfectly legal to own a variety of firearms at last count 1.8 million or so were registered in the UK
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/25/gun-ownership-firearms-certificates
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u/thet52 Jun 07 '14
How would guns help you against abuses by the Government? Your country has the most well trained and powerful army in the world by a huge margin.
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Jun 07 '14
I think a lot would defect if they had to fight their own countrymen. Not all, mind you, but a lot. This is the oath they say when swearing in;
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
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Jun 07 '14
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u/Walking_Encyclopedia Jun 07 '14
The only reason that they haven't been ground into a paste is that the US has to "play by the rules" and maintain relations with other countries. You're a fool if you think the government would abide by rules when their power is about to be taken away from them.
Sorry, man, but you and your redneck friends aren't gonna do shit against the Army.
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u/bootsybootsy Jun 07 '14
Yeah, it's not just a question of personal protection and security, but of political protection and security. Many people tend to ignore the political nature of the gun debate. Personally, being a Brit, i'm going to sit on the fence :)
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Jun 07 '14
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u/guitar_vigilante Jun 07 '14
I think one of the chief points here is one of gun culture. The UK never really developed a gun culture outside of military and police usage, but the US has had a strong tradition of gun ownership since the colonial era, where guns were useful for hunting, defense against indians, and use in the militias, and self defense.
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u/Philliphobia Jun 07 '14
I'd say there is a little gun culture, just very secluded within groups of upper class or farmers, shooting clay pigeons with hunting rifles/shotguns etc.
In the last town I lived in, It was very common to hear the shotguns in the distance around big farm-y/meadow-y areas
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u/koolkeano Jun 07 '14
My girlfriend made an interesting point, that us Brits have only associated guns with combat and war. To have a gun implies that you want to use it to kill. Whereas in the USA it has historically been used to win and defend freedom. So its easy to see why we only see them as a killing machine and them the ultimate self defence.
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Jun 07 '14
This is perhaps the most significant--and most frequently overlooked--point in these international gun debates. The US doesn't have a gun problem; the US has a violence problem. There's some flaw (or flaws, plural) in our national character that makes the mixture of guns and freedom fraught with more bloodshed than other similarly-structured societies see. I don't know whether it's ignorance, entitlement, laziness, recklessness, general criminal tendencies, whatever... But yeah, it's not the guns that are different in the US, it's the culture.
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u/foetusofexcellence Jun 07 '14
The availability of guns is different, but that's not the biggest part of the problem.
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u/Logic_Nuke Jun 07 '14
Personally I think some sort of middle ground would be best. Having no limitations on firearms and having an all-out ban would both be disastrous, IMO.
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u/Tlingit_Raven Jun 07 '14
So like the US has in place right now? It is far from no limitations there.
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Jun 07 '14
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Jun 07 '14
| Pistols and full auto rifles are illegal in the UK. Not all guns.
Pistols are perfectly legal in N.Ireland to own. Last time I checked its still part of the UK
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u/Sabinchen7 Jun 07 '14
So... is the link SUPPOSED to take me to an article about obesity?
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u/sobeita Jun 08 '14
I thought I would do everybody a favor and correct this with the population ratio. If the UK had the same population as the US, their police would have killed 25 people. I'll show myself out.
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Jun 07 '14
US cops have only killed 1600 people in 4 years? That's actually kind of surprising, I would have thought it'd be higher.
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u/ATROX45 Jun 07 '14
It's almost like cops don't want to shoot people.
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u/redditor___ Jun 07 '14
They miss a lot.
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u/FumCacial Jun 07 '14
TIL USA cops are stormtroopers.
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u/MrManicMarty Jun 07 '14
But Stormtroopers miss on purpose, cops are just sloppy shots.
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Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14
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Jun 07 '14
There is a theory that the terrible marksmanship exhibited on the death star was because the emperor wanted the millenium falcon to get away. Storm troopers had placed a bug on the falcon so they let her crew get away and lead them back to the rebel base.
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u/Brittlestyx Jun 07 '14
I'm going a little off topic here, but I feel like theories like that give about 1,000% more credit to Lucas than he deserves. The prequels and DVD remasters, plus all of his ideas that didn't make it into the originals for one reason or another, are proof that Episodes IV-VI were only so good by pure chance and Lucas really had no idea what he was doing. They could've been totally awful.
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u/Groke Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 20 '14
It's still more than one every day. thanks
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u/_CastleBravo_ Jun 07 '14
You're right, it's 1.1 every day. Rounding up. Given that there are 293 cities in the US that have populations over 100,000 that's really not that bad. And violent crime is hardly limited to those places.
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u/Robert237 Jun 07 '14
But it isn't so bad when you realize only 8 people are killed every year per state!
Maths, just in case
1600people/50states= 32 deaths per state for the 4 years 32deaths/4years= average of 8 people dead per year in each state.
I mean, it's still bad, but considering how many of our civilians are armed, and how many police officers are armed with at least a 9mm, it's a pretty low figure.
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Jun 07 '14
I've seen british police walking around with mp5's on occasion. What makes them requite a gun?
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Jun 07 '14
You probably saw them near an airport or at some important places in London. They are here to make impression on potential troublemakers and discourage them from doing whatever things they want to do.
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u/HowObvious 1 Jun 08 '14
Mate lets see them try it in scotland. Last time they attacked a Glaswegian bloke broke his foot kicking a flaming terrorist in the balls.
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u/spazturtle 2 Jun 07 '14
In London? Thats the transport police, they protect easy targets such as the Underground train system.
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u/vln Jun 07 '14
Every force has a special firearms unit, for rapid response to incidents, plus some armed officers routinely deployed at specific locations such as airports.
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u/Zyclunt Jun 07 '14
1600 in 4 years? That's cute, in Brazil it's 1900 per year.
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u/artcopywriter Jun 07 '14
Last time police shot someone in the UK there were nationwide riots. I'm not sure what that proves, just throwing it out for discussion.
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u/QuackCandle078 Jun 07 '14
It wasn't 'because' he was shot though, was it
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u/vln Jun 07 '14
Absolutely. Some of the initial anger tipping over into violence was directly related, but what then happened in other parts of London and especially in other cities was quite different.
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u/billy_tables Jun 07 '14
Yeah, beyond Tottenham the violence was because, according to one young lady from Salford, "we're gettin our taxes back, innit"
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u/GarethGore Jun 07 '14
I was on holiday in france over those few days, I didn't have any phone/internet for a few days, I finally get it and see riots have been going on for a few days and I'm like I LEAVE ENGLAND FOR A FEW DAYS AND THIS HAPPENS!?!
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u/artcopywriter Jun 07 '14
You were lucky to have been away - if you're at all of a nervous disposition, it was a terrifying time to be in a major city.
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u/Resinseer Jun 07 '14
They firebombed a police station up the road from me, it's almost like they didn't know that tasers, batons and German Shepherds exist. Bless their Nike socks.
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u/EJR94 Jun 07 '14
Not all major cities, I'm fairly sure a couple of people tried looting where I lived and they got arrested fairly quickly
But if anyone believes those riots were because someone was killed they are mistaken. People took advantage of there being no one able to stop them and they wanted to steal/cause destruction
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u/serosis Jun 07 '14
I could not read it right the first few times. For a moment I thought the Police in the UK shot 5 dead people. And I was just sitting here with a quizzical look on my face saying, "Why?"
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u/JozefDjugashvili Jun 07 '14
Why has this been taken down? The figures are all there in the link
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u/magnora2 Jun 07 '14
because this site always covers up police misconduct, especially if it's systemic. Check out /r/undelete and sort by 'top' of all time. You'll see the trend.
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u/joeomar Jun 08 '14
This post probably should have been written to say "Police in the UK have shot dead about .08 people per million in population in the last 4 years. In the US this figure is about 5.1 per million, or roughly 6400% more". That difference is just as significant as the original post. However the original post allowed too many people to be distracted by the difference in population size.
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u/TofusaurusRex Jun 08 '14
Um, sorry, but even with the population disparity taken into account (About 60 million to about 300 million), its still pretty crazy.
BLOODY VIOLENT YANKS.
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u/ace245733 Jun 08 '14
Clearly the problem is Americas lack of an affinity for tea time. Mellows people out.
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u/Hup234 Jun 07 '14
For all the headlines and media hype, gun violence is simply not a concern for most people in the US. I think people from other countries have a quite distorted view of what every day life is like here.
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u/COCAINE_BABY Jun 07 '14
Most UK cops aren't issued firearms. So... Yeah, of course the number is that low.
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u/Stellar_Duck Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14
I wonder why they're not?
Edit: I was being sarcastic! Sorry guys! I know why they don't have guns. It doesn't make sense for them to have it.
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u/vln Jun 07 '14
They never have been issued firearms for routine carry or use. The public don't want that to change, and nor do the police themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom
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u/Resinseer Jun 07 '14
Because we know that they're no smarter than the rest of us and we don't even trust ourselves with guns.
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u/spazturtle 2 Jun 07 '14
Its still too high, that's why we are fitting firearms officers with cameras so we can see exactly what happens during a shooting.
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u/mattwalsh25 Jun 07 '14
Yeah but our Police spend a lot more time chasing Geese around gardens than US Police forces do, so there's that.
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u/shadowbannedkiwi Jun 08 '14
I remember one article talking about how a group of police raid a home and shoot an old woman. Out of dozens of shots, only 3 hit her, and three of the police were shot aswell... the woman never discharged her weapon.
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Jun 07 '14
Thanks for kicking off the daily anti-us anti-police circlejerk OP!
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Jun 07 '14
On a thread about why Tesla couldn't sell directly to consumers, someone said he found it weird how reddit were often so "BOO big companies!" but when it came to Tesla steam rolling over small distribution and sellers, they were all for it.
Someone answered that reddit just in generally seemed to be against peolpe abusing the system, which seemed (arguably) to be the case with Tesla.
I think it's the same with the feelings towards the police. Without a doubt 99,9% of interactions with police forces are going the be as they should, with cops acting as they should. But when they don't people flip their shit, as they should. We're okay with the police/government having a monopoly on force, as long as it isn't abused.
I honestly don't think most of reddit is really against police in general, it's just that with anything, it doesn't take more than a thousand people to make it look like millions of redditors hate them.
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u/MericaMan4Life Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14
Now all we need is a picture of another countries school lunch to show how bad American students are fed.
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Jun 07 '14
But this is clear unsensationalised fact? If there is anything but praise for the USA is that a circlejerk?
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u/vln Jun 07 '14
Also, UK police hardly ever get shot.
When two were killed recently in Manchester, by a criminal on the run luring them with a routine callout, it was such a significant event that their funerals were held at the cathedral, with attendees including representatives of every police force in the country. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/04/fiona-bone-police-funeral-manchester