Close to twenty years ago, in his seminal essay “A Nation of Cowards” – which was in its day the manifesto of the “Shall Issue” movement – Jeffrey Snyder took on, among many other themes, the job of proving that the law-abiding citizen was eminently trustworthy with firearms. This, he did with a nation that had been intellectually marinaded in the idea that citizens with guns were inherently dangerous for a couple of decades.
Snyder pointed to a bunch of studies and statistics that were a breath of fresh air for Second Amendment supporters for whom the media’s drumbeat of paranoia flunked the sniff test. Being published as it was, at the very beginning of the dawn of the conservative alternative media (Usenet news groups were among the essay’s first conduits), the essay was a revelation to many. We are rapidly approaching the 20th anniversary of this seminal essay – and when we get there, I’ll be commemorating it in style.
Here was one of the stats that was a real eye-opener when this piece came out:
A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The “error rate” for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.
It is simply not possible to square the numbers above and the experience of Florida with the notions that honest, law-abiding gun owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to shoot someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of determining when it is proper to use lethal force in defense of their lives. Nor upon reflection should these results seem surprising. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers of observation and great book-learning to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, “You’re coming with me,” her judgment that a crime is being committed is not likely to be in error. There is little chance that she is going to shoot the wrong person. It is the police, because they are rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are more likely to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and innocence are not so clear-cut, and in which the probability for mistakes is higher.
This was driven home to us last week in New York, at the Empire State Building shooting. The shooter killed one person – his target. The cops were responsible for killing the shooter – and wounding nine bystanders, shooting three and injuring six others with ricocheting debris.
Bob Owens at PJM notes that the NYPD doesn’t issue tasers to beat cops; anyone they can’t take down with clubs, it’s off to the holsters:
Not making Tasers standard issue to officers in a city as densely populated as New York would be almost criminally negligent, and I’d like Mayor Bloomberg to explain why someone so strongly against the civilian ownership of guns hasn’t taken steps to minimize the threat that handgun-armed police pose to the nine million civilians in his city.
If anything, the number of bystanders hit by police gunfire in this incident and others suggests that NYPD officers should be armed with Tasers instead of handguns. It simply isn’t possible to use a handgun in many parts of the city without significant risk of hitting and killing innocent citizens downrange of the target.
It’s not a knock of cops to say that gun controllers who demand we “trust the cops to do the right thing” are ignorant of human nature and the physiology and psychology of stress.
It would be helpful to know if the NYPD were using AET (Advanced Energy Transfer) or RRLP (Reduced Ricochet, Limited Penetration) rounds, which would be more appropriate in a densely populated urban area, or if they were using standard projectiles – it might explain why only the malefactor was killed in the exchange with the police. The AET/RRLP projectiles (widely available to law enforcement) are designed to fragment with target contact reducing any subsequent collateral (through and through or ricochet) damage to low energy, low mass non lethal shrapnel. So far none of the reports I’ve read indicate what kind of ammunition NYPD was using.
The AET/RRLP projectiles ( i.e.Glaser Safety Slugs) are not a bad idea for home protection where other people may be on the other side of the sheet rock behind your target.
oh DG, where’s your homework?
Joel Rosenberg would have had a field day with this story.
I believe he would have Terry, and I miss that………sigh
Perhaps it would be a good idea to issue tasers, but methinks that in a case where the perp was pointing a gun, the tasers would not have come out of the holster. Hopefully someone at NYPD, or one of the accidental victims, takes a good, long look at the video and takes action if it appears that the police weren’t following proper tactics.
And of course, all Hell breaks loose when all Hell breaks loose, but hopefully those involved can look beyond their own interests here…
Angryclown understands your point, Mitch. Trained police officers can’t be trusted with firearms, but angry right-wing gun nuts can be. Good to know
1. Your first point has nothing to do with the NYC incident. No one says the cops shot the wrong people by “mistake”. They shot at the right person, but their bullets accidently hit the wrong people (either because they missed their target or the bullets went through the target).
2. “It simply isn’t possible to use a handgun in many parts of the city without significant risk of hitting and killing innocent citizens downrange of the target.”
Holds true for most places other than the middle-of-nowhere. I suspect a lot of gun control proponents will save this quote for future reference.
Amadou Diallo called me from Heaven to say that he disagrees with you, Angry Clown.
Sorry, AC, but your usual ignorance is on full display. Across the country, there are probably 1,000 law enforcement types that shouldn’t have guns. Being union members, they would be classified as left wing nut jobs!
As Rick correctly notes, Mitch inadvertently undercuts his often-stated claim that citizen gun-nuts are no particular danger to the rest of us. Of course you loonies aren’t exactly fans of logic and reason, so Angryclown has little fear you’ll notice, much less understand, the point.
So the argument against armed citizens intervening in a shooting spree is that they might do as poorly as the cops.
Noted.
And I don’t own a gun 🙂
Uh, yeah.
Your ability to grasp the bloody obvious, once it’s been explained to you, exceeds Angryclown’s expectations.
Checking my internet Taser!
ZAPP!
AC? You okay? This thing is not supposed to be fatal.
Clownie and Rick seem to misunderstand reasoning, so let me simply this and walk them through it.
Mitch: “It simply isn’t possible to use a handgun in many parts of the city without significant risk of hitting and killing innocent citizens downrange of the target.”
Ok, so we agree gunfire is dangerous. Right? You got that part in your minds yet?
AC: “As Rick correctly notes, Mitch inadvertently undercuts his often-stated claim that citizen gun-nuts are no particular danger to the rest of us.”
What part of this does Clownie not understand?
“A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The “error rate” for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.”
To help understand the situation, let’s look at 2011. In 2011 police officers in the United States shot 1,146 people, killing 607. Given the “error rate above” that means that roughly 67 innocent people were killed by cops in 2011.
Now, let’s look at the total number of CCW murders and murder/suicides for the last 5 years using the VPC’s inflated numbers to try and make CCW holders look as bad as possible. That’s 83.
So 15 people a year, total, and even then most of those wouldn’t have been prevented by banning CCW since most of those were crimes of passion that would have happened anyway rather than innocents in the crossfire.
More people die each year from cancer caused by cross country airplane rides than CCW holders. You guys up for banning airplanes now?
So what? Those gun nuts are dangerous! There are roughly 800K police officers and Federal agents in the US who are authorized to carry guns. Florida alone has more CCW permit holders (955K). So the incidence of CCW holders hitting anyone is far, far less than cops, even holding crimes of passion against CCW holders.
So what? Cops are trained. Yep, they’re trained and they’re still far more dangerous to innocent folks than CCW holders in both absolute and relative terms. You guys up for banning cops now?
I get that guns are scarey to you guys, but in the words AC put in Mitch’s mouth citizen gun-nuts are no particular danger to the rest of us.. You need a clue as to risks and relative safety. Standing near a cop is far more dangerous than being anywhere near a CCW permit holder. But I know, you don’t have or even like clues, which is why you’re Demoncrats: but functioning in the real world works better with clues enabled.
Mitch, you should warn readers of a segue, to help the less gifted make the transition between points. Meanwhile, perhaps I can help AC understand (I’ve been spending time at Penigma. I’m not as fluent as June Cleaver in Jive but I’m learning to speak Dolt).
You see, AC, the key is ” . . . shooting three and wounding nine others.” It’s the “shooting three” bit that ties together Mitch’s point about civilians rarely shooting the wrong guy with his point about cops often doing it, as they did outside the Empire State Building. They shot AT the right guy and hit him a dozen times, which is Good; but they MISSED him several times, too and thereby hit other people, which is Not Good. And they hit the right guy but those rounds penetrated, ricocheted off whatever was behind him, and injured half-a-dozen more, with is Idiotic, even for New Yorkers. Hence, his suggestion the cops consider using Tasers downtown instead of bullets.
All better now?
DOAKES: “…Hence, his suggestion the cops consider using Tasers downtown instead of bullets”
NEW YORK LIBERAL: “Hah! The Empire State building is not teh downtown! You are pwn3d!”