RE: When do statistics count?
April 23, 2022 at 5:02 am
(This post was last modified: April 23, 2022 at 5:03 am by Jehanne.)
(April 23, 2022 at 4:42 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(April 23, 2022 at 4:28 am)Helios Wrote: Isn't it depressing that the only cop apologists can make the police seem less worryingly gun-happy is by comparing them to average joes on the street or suicide victims or oceanic predators?
A slightly more simplistic (but also more illustrative way) to look at it is:
80 000 000 civilians kill 45 000 people per year with guns.
700 000 cops kill 1000 people per year with guns.
If there were as many cops as there are armed civilians, - and nothing else changed - deaths by cop would be in the neighbourhood of 114 000 per year, with no change in the number of gun deaths by civilians. The chief reason that cops kill - in raw numbers - fewer people than armed civilians do is that there are fewer cops.
Boru
Cops deal with dangerous criminals on a regular, if not daily basis, and so, there is a selection effect going on here. Imagine buying a pair of handcuffs. You as a private citizen could carry them around with you all day; you'll never use them as part of some (legal) citizen's arrest.
