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On 4/26/2018 at 12:30 PM, Sociotard said:

Canada's level-headed response to the Toronto attack shocks US.

 

In the US, an unarmed innocent man will say "don't shoot" and get shot 20 times. Heck, officers have been fired for NOT doing that. In Canada, a guilty man can beg for suicide by cop and be peacefully arrested with all civil rights observed.

 

 

Why Canadian police are so good at not shooting people

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3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Article talks about the emphasis on training, including for deescalation and not-confusing-a-phone-for-a-gun.  Valid.

 

And yet, the rate for Canadian officers to die is 5.6 per 100,000 active officers per year, 1961 to 2009

https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2010003/article/11354/tbl/tbl01-eng.htm

 

For the US, it is 7.1 per 100,000 per year, 1992 to 2012

Number killed 2007 to 2016 (only took 1992 to 2012) https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2016/officers-feloniously-killed/tables/table-1.xls

https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2008

https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/1998

Full Time 1992 to 2012  https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/nsleed.pdf

 

The US kills its officers at a higher rate than Canada. We can't really answer why Canadian Police are more restrained than US Police, until we know why the Canadian population is more restrained.

 

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7 hours ago, Sociotard said:

The US kills its officers at a higher rate than Canada. We can't really answer why Canadian Police are more restrained than US Police, until we know why the Canadian population is more restrained.

 

Personally, I believe there's a synergy at work there. The one contributes to the other. Either party becoming less restrained would probably lead to escalation.

 

OTOH I did hear some of the Star Trek Next Gen cast propose their own theory at a Toronto convention:

 

 

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4 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

Perhaps the Canadian populace does not live in mortal fear of the police?

 

Generally fair to say, but there are degrees of fear depending on which segment of the populace you ask. Sadly, there's a lot of anecdotal and some empirical evidence that Canadian visible minorities are targeted by law enforcement more often and with less justification. We're not immune to that particular blot on the human psyche.  It's per capita rarer that it descends to the level of violence than seems to be the case in America, but that's not unknown either.  :(

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1 hour ago, Starlord said:

 

The last twitter comment quoted in that article is the one that gets me: " Parkland Survivors too damned stupid to realize the Secret Service banned guns for the Pence appearance, not the NRA.
Or, do they know the truth and once again need to lie to create a narrative and stay in the news cycle?"

 

This guy can't see the underlying irony and hypocrisy of the situation, regardless of which party initiated it? It's like complaining, "Those kids are too stupid to realize we're not throwing rocks. We're throwing bricks."

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While I respect the apparent contradiction, I could easily see an argument for why the situation the NRA is giving Pence isn't all that different from the one they want for schoolchildren.

 

Pence will get an event where the people in the room will be barred from having guns, except for the professionals who are supposed to have them.

 

The NRA wants schoolchildren to learn in a place where everyone is barred from having guns, except for the professionals who are supposed to have them.

 

I have seen calls for more resource officers in schools, and some calls for teachers to be trained as resource officers.  Calls for teachers to be allowed to carry if they want to and have a C&C permit are less common, but they are there.  I haven't seen any requests for children to be armed.

 

So, NRA-types are comfortable with gun bans in certain settings, so long as there is an increased attention to having someone right there who is armed.  #nosofttargets and all that.

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7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

This guy can't see the underlying irony and hypocrisy of the situation, regardless of which party initiated it?

 

There's nothing to see, though. The event will not be a gun free zone, as noted in the article. There will be armed security out the wazoo. The complaints from the gun control side are a false equivalency, so the commenter is essentially correct, even if being a little crass.

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See, that's the thing: this is an NRA meeting. These are supposed to be the responsible gun owners, the ones who aren't mentally unbalanced or criminal, and by their argument should therefore have the right to carry weapons wherever they wish. Has Mike Pence himself not come out publicly in support of that position, or am I mistaken?

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Again, I think that they are more interested in 

1) maintaining the individual right to bear arms, but allowing for some situations where they have to go without (I dare you to find NRA publications advocating for passengers to be allowed to carry on passenger aircraft)

2) Eliminating 'soft targets'.  So, they want the response to school shootings to be "more armed guards in school", but not "arm all the kids". 

 

They are okay with the NRA meeting to be gun free, because it will still advocate for individual rights, and it won't be a soft target.

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12 hours ago, Sociotard said:

Again, I think that they are more interested in

 

Welllllll, let's be clear here on the NRA's actual interests.  I am a gun owner and believe in the 2nd amendment but strong gun control.  The NRA's top priorities by FAR are lobbying to maintain the SELLING of guns and the gun culture which keeps them so popular.

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From the other side of the world, the NRA looks like it has become the equivalent of a tobacco industry lobby group that calls itself the "Smokers' Rights Association" or something similar.

 

Yes, I am aware it has a more interesting history. For example, back in the day Black veterans set up NRA chapters in order to allow them to train members of their communities to defend themselves against the Klan.

 

And also, the NRA were in favour of gun control when the Black Panthers were exercising their open carry rights in California.

 

But that was all old US politics. Now it doesn't seem much more than an industry lobby group with more than the usual level of grassroots support and a degree of constitutional protection.

 

It's hard to be polite about that.

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In Michigan, a law is being pushed that would add work requirements to Medicaid. If passed, it would also give exceptions to some counties with very high unemployment. 

 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/3/17315382/medicaid-work-requirements-michigan-race

 

The tricky bit, though is that the counties with high unemployment are mostly rural, and mostly white.  So, in Wayne county (has Detroit in it), the overall unemployment rate is a happy 5%. So the work requirement applies. Of course, in the city itself the white unemployment rate is 4.9% and the black rate is 14.5%, and the county is 39% Black. 

 

Meanwhile, rural Cheboygan county (where one of the authors of the bill lives) is exempt, because its rate is 18% unemployed. It just happens to be 93% white.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Sociotard said:

In Michigan, a law is being pushed that would add work requirements to Medicaid. If passed, it would also give exceptions to some counties with very high unemployment. 

 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/3/17315382/medicaid-work-requirements-michigan-race

 

The tricky bit, though is that the counties with high unemployment are mostly rural, and mostly white.  So, in Wayne county (has Detroit in it), the overall unemployment rate is a happy 5%. So the work requirement applies. Of course, in the city itself the white unemployment rate is 4.9% and the black rate is 14.5%, and the county is 39% Black. 

 

Meanwhile, rural Cheboygan county (where one of the authors of the bill lives) is exempt, because its rate is 18% unemployed. It just happens to be 93% white.

 

 

I live in Michigan... believe me, I know what utter $h!te my state legislators are. Just another example...

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