Summations Only

I understand that Percy. The issue here is that even without worrying about gun control, the police ought to have better tactics than is exhibited here, and getting there would not take an act of Congress, an amendment to the Constitution, etc. Even when approaching a traffic stop, bad tactics vs good tactics can make the difference and can avoid creating a shoot or be shot scenario. We agree, but in this case, the problem is not that we don't want the police to investigate, but that when they do, even when they have guns, that they ought at least to take steps not to shoot the homeowner. Knock and announce helps some. Unlike the situation at the traffic stop, the person in his own home might well be armed and within his rights to shoot intruders.Imagine if called the cops because you saw an armed robber breaking into your neighbors house, but by the time the police got there, the crook had bolted and the cops shot your barbecue buddy. Is that something you ought to consider before you call the cops? That the situation is just going to get worse?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Agreed. But my point involving bell shaped curves means we'll never achieve uniformly "better tactics." A spectrum of differently appropriate and effective tactics that result in some number of negative outcomes will always be employed. Yes, of course they *ought* to employ tactics that reduce the odds of shooting the homeowner, but the success with which they do that will follow a bell shaped curve. Better to take away the guns. I understand that isn't possible today - I'm just saying.--Percy

Please don't conflate the UK with the US, with regard to guns.I haven't been able to find any statistics for police guns going missing (I suspect it's pretty much zero - armed UK police officers form a tiny percentage of the overall personnel, and they are incredibly highly regulated), but this article indicates that a grand total of 56 guns went missing in 4 years from the UK armed forces: Gone AWOL: How deadly firearms are lost or stolen from the Ministry of Defence every MONTH under Coalition | Daily Mail Online(I know, it's the Daily Mail, but the figures themselves are official government figures).I realise that it helps those in favour of gun ownership to paint a frightening, dystopian vision of a country bereft of widespread gun ownership - but the UK is one of many modern countries which, very inconveniently, manage to be perfectly decent, free democracies, which don't allow widespread gun ownership. We've got loads of rights and stuff - we'd even be really happy about life if we didn't have such bloody awful weather all the time 😊So do avoid conflating the UK with the US when it comes to guns. I'll just call you on it and remind you that a happy, modern, law abiding democracy doesn't need guns.

Perhaps there are other behavior principles to which you might apply that point. No behavioral fix is going to be 100%. Exactly, Percy. I think that's a point I made in my post. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Teen takes selfie with a gun, accidentally shoots self | CNN

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(CNN)A 19-year-old Houston man, a day ahead of starting community college, accidentally killed himself Tuesday while taking selfies with a gun, police said.

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The gun blast hit Deleon Alonso Smith in the throat, CNN affiliate KPRC reported.

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Just some follow up of that shooting in SE Atlanta

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I hear Leah screaming, I see Chris walking out, ‘They just shot me, they just shot me, and they killed my dog’, Colson said Tuesday. So I got him to lay down, took my shirt off and rendered first aid. And Chris just kept saying, ‘Why did they shoot me? Why did they shoot my dog?’

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Really? Neighbor rendered first aid? Where the @&$# were the police?

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Are we perfect? DeKalb director of public safety Cedric Alexander said. Absolutely not. But when we find a mistake, we own it. We own the fact that we were at the wrong house. We didn’t hide it. We didn’t mismanage it. We were at the wrong location based on information that was given to us.

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Shortly after 7:30 p.m. Monday, three DeKalb County police officers were dispatched to a burglary call on Boulderwoods Drive, just off Bouldercrest Road, about a mile south of I-20. Derek Perez, the man who made the 911 call, wrote on Facebook that he’d told police about a possible burglar outside of the farthest house at the end of the street.

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The officers, however, stopped at Chris and Leah McKinley’s home the second house on the street because it matched the physical description given, according to a release from the GBI.

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So we went into the first tan house we saw even though the actual house was further down the street? Completely unacceptable even on a bell curve. The problems only start with being at the wrong house.

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Alexander, meanwhile, asked the public to let the investigation into Monday’s shooting run its course.

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None of us should be speculating or assuming anything at this point, he said. There needs to be an investigation. There was a police officer who was severely injured and had a great deal of blood lost. We’re going to continue to pray for the officer and the homeowner.

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Grrr!Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Just the pubs.

Ironically, the first pub I bought a pint in was called "The Gun Barrels" (named for Birmingham's historical gun manufacturing). :-)

Early this morning Andrew Cuomo's first deputy counsel was struck in the head by a random bullet in front of a Rite Aid pharmacy in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, NYC (GOV. CUOMO'S FIRST DEPUTY COUNSEL - CAREY GABAY - SHOT DURING PRE-J'OUVERT FESTIVAL VIOLENCE). He's in the hospital in critical condition.If he'd been packing this never would have happened.--Percy

"Taking selfies with a gun"? Well, I think I see where he went wrong.

Presumably they've closed submissions for this year's Darwin Award early.

"Selfie with a gun" could become the new euphemism for suicide.

"This one's the camera, this one's the gun. This one's the camera, this one's the gun. This one's...BANG!"--Percy

This reminds me of Slender's remark in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor': 'if I be drunk I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken knaves'.

In basic training, we learned not to call our M16s guns. They are rifles.If you made that mistake, you might be required to clutch your M16 over your head with one hand, your genitals with the other, shaking each on cue while declaiming 50 times or more:

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(shake) This is my rifle,
(shake) This is my gun.
(shake) This is for killing,
(shake) This is for fun.

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It was only half bad-- --too many shakes of one, too few of the other. That young man just needed better training and a better notion of fun.