Side story on the recent gun spree

[jmm99]

Good to see you're reading this thread - buttering you up like brioche.

In this post, Some Chasms are Too Wide to Bridge - pt 2, I linked to two monographs: Dave Kopel and Barbara Frey, to illustrate the gulf between the positions of Kopel and Frey (UN S.R., etc.). I did not discuss them substantively as they bear on genocide issues in Central Africa.

Discussing "gun control" and "gun possession" in Central Africa in this thread would take it far beyond its reasonable limits (HT to Steve Blair). However, your expertise in this area would be appreciated because both Kopel's and Frey's arguments are of interest to me.

So, if you want to, please take a look at the monographs and get back to me in a PM.

My personal view on the UN position (as applied to the US) is obviously negative. I think Dave (despite all his mastery of 2nd Amendment history here; and his being a Michigan Law grad and a Law Review editor ) is playing Pollyanna with respect to genocide (but, perhaps not).

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Mike

[Stan]

Discussing "gun control" and "gun possession" in Central Africa in this thread would take it far beyond its reasonable limits

Moi Mikka,

Mitä kuuluu ?

I would add (albeit dated info from the 90s) that genocide in Africa has very little to do with firearms. Of the estimated 800,000 in Rwanda and Zaire, most suffered far worse fate at the blade of a machete than that of any firearm.

There are barely any gun controls and firearms possession outside of the military and even then, are limited to the very elite, and they have no clue how to operate said.

Kopel argues that the UN tools in place are ineffective. Couldn't agree more. But he also likes to inject that "human rights" thing as if the players even cared. No good reasons to preach international law to people that never made it past 6th grade, dictator or otherwise.

We then wander off into what a State's obligation is regarding human rights.

They contend it seems that, civilians under no controls, possess firearms. Anyone that has been in Sub-Sahara can tell you that civilians do not possess anything and the military arm of the regime possesses and controls everything.

Regards, Stan

[Fuchs]

Stan, the GSG9 guys are only a tiny part of the German police special team s realm.

The police in German cities has what's known as MEK and SEK, with SEK being remotely similar to GSG9 (though not tasked to care about cases like kidnapped airliners, for example) while MEKs are a kind of reinforcement for arrests and also mobile observation units (for lengthy observations).
MEKs do their arrests when the suspect is moving in the public, while the SEK does so if much resistance is expected and in static (barricade, hostage) situations.

Again, the very existence of the MEK shows that German police work isn't much about guns. A MEK policeman can spend years in such a unit without ever needing to draw his weapon and aim at somebody.
Their surprise arrests are more about Ju Jutsu (a German-collected, Japanese-named collection of unarmed close combat techniques including plenty submission techniques; official German police sport) than about pointing guns.

The American approach is much more loose in regard to pointing guns at people (and more), and it shows in the quantity of shots fired at people.
This is mirroring the civilian approach, and I consider this reliance on guns very unsatisfactory, to say the least.

[jmm99]

considering that, 12 Jan my driveway was bare concrete and half of the front yard was green. Since then near 100 inches of snow; it's great for Michigan Tech's Winter Carnival this week, though.

Cheers

Mike

[Stan]

Stan, the GSG9 guys are only a tiny part of the German police special team s realm.

The police in German cities has what's known as MEK and SEK, with SEK being remotely similar to GSG9 (though not tasked to care about cases like kidnapped airliners, for example) while MEKs are a kind of reinforcement for arrests and also mobile observation units (for lengthy observations).
MEKs do their arrests when the suspect is moving in the public, while the SEK does so if much resistance is expected and in static (barricade, hostage) situations.

Fuchs,
Those are in fact who we work with now, but on a much smaller scale under the guise of the European Bomb Techs network. We are not part of a commando unit, but by law, we support the commandos here (very similar to your SEK). A strange relationship that requires cooperation if we are to succeed. All of us carry government issued firearms and most of us have at least one personal firearm.

Again, the very existence of the MEK shows that German police work isn't much about guns. A MEK policeman can spend years in such a unit without ever needing to draw his weapon and aim at somebody.
Their surprise arrests are more about Ju Jutsu (a German-collected, Japanese-named collection of unarmed close combat techniques including plenty submission techniques; official German police sport) than about pointing guns.

MEK seems to be more of a specialized SWAT support team and their skills are certainly in high demand and perhaps a bit expensive to operate. Just my opinion. My brother in law has been with the Capital police EOD for over 20 years and also acknowledges that SWAT teams as well as under cover CID form an intricate part of many sting operations that often work out without the outward use of firearms. Regarding martial arts: generally speaking you can have no way of knowing how you will actually react during a reside position. I spent a year with Koreans on the MDL practicing tae kwon-do and it's not as simple nor effective as drawing a weapon - especially when you already have an AK pointed at you.

The American approach is much more loose in regard to pointing guns at people (and more), and it shows in the quantity of shots fired at people. This is mirroring the civilian approach, and I consider this reliance on guns very unsatisfactory, to say the least.

We may disagree on this point and so be it.
I look back on instances in the USA such as the 1997 shootout in Hollywood and 2007 Virginia Tech massacre where everyday patrolmen were simply outgunned and had to wait for SWAT to come in. German police would have perhaps tackled this situation differently and we can argue that til the dogs come home. To no avail, we will simply disagree !

I conclude we have a much larger, and, at times, more severe problem with gun-related criminal incidences than some of Europe experiences (having lived abroad more than 35 years). The examples above involved some real firepower and the police were simply outgunned. It's no surprise that our law enforcement and public are more apt to pulling a firearm than taking self defense classes.

[Fuchs]

I spent a year with Koreans on the MDL practicing tae kwon-do and it's not as simple nor effective as drawing a weapon - especially when you already have an AK pointed at you.

Unarmed defence is intricate (see PM), but I submit that someone pointing an AK at me would shoot me if I drew a handgun. Don't see how that helps.

[Stan]

Unarmed defence is intricate (see PM), but I submit that someone pointing an AK at me would shoot me if I drew a handgun. Don't see how that helps.

Fuchs,
Yes, the age old theory of Tae Kwon Do is unarmed defense and under the circumstances from 1955 that may have applied well in Korea. There are however limitations to an art that never evolved or took into account scenarios following the 1950s or America.

I would see many more instances of weapons pointed in my face when it was clear I had a side arm. I believe (since I am still alive) that by being armed presented my opponent with a situation he was not mentally prepared for, and backed down.

PM received. Thanks.

[Firn]

A functional integration of various groups/levels of police force could and should certainly increase the efficiency and effectivness. It is of course of great importance that the 'right' group is able to get there in time to do the required job. Utoya sadly docet.


I did reflect a bit on the 'hot spot' approach to policing which was brought up in the cited NYT article. The idea behind it might be surprisingly simple and quite easy to model.

Think of a crime hot spot as an efficient market of crime, where the costumer meets the supplier and the competitor the other. Staying out of that area of criminal exchange will hurt your bottom line or make it harder to get your drug or sex fix. If the police starts to turn up a lot at irregular but often narrow intervals and interrupts that efficient exchange of goods and violence it will induce some criminals to stay away and to shift away to another spot.

The key success from a police point of view is that this disrupts many supply chains and criminal nets which take some time (if at all) to reach the old efficiency in new hot spots. When you look at the big picture with many hot spots forced to undergo this process it is clear that those drops in efficiency can lower the overall crime rate by a good degree.

(Some violence, like inter-gang one, might increase after the shift away from the hot spot, as they might fight over the new territory. It depends of course on the relative gains and falls. )

[Steve Blair]

This is one interesting look at what might be a contributing factor in the uptick in violence in Chicago last year. The article deals with Memphis, but Chicago was doing away with some of its housing projects in the 2010-2011 timeframe. It's a long article, but worth the read.

[carl]

This is one interesting look at what might be a contributing factor in the uptick in violence in Chicago last year. The article deals with Memphis, but Chicago was doing away with some of its housing projects in the 2010-2011 timeframe. It's a long article, but worth the read.

I read that a long time ago and forgot about it. It was very good. When I skimmed it this time what popped out at me was the mention that NYC and DC by doing this kind of thing are essentially exporting their crime. Perhaps an unintended way to speed gentrification and making those superzip codes that much safer for their denizens.

[Stan]

A functional integration of various groups/levels of police force could and should certainly increase the efficiency and effectivness. It is of course of great importance that the 'right' group is able to get there in time to do the required job. Utoya sadly docet.


I did reflect a bit on the 'hot spot' approach to policing which was brought up in the cited NYT article. The idea behind it might be surprisingly simple and quite easy to model.

Think of a crime hot spot as an efficient market of crime, where the costumer meets the supplier and the competitor the other. Staying out of that area of criminal exchange will hurt your bottom line or make it harder to get your drug or sex fix. If the police starts to turn up a lot at irregular but often narrow intervals and interrupts that efficient exchange of goods and violence it will induce some criminals to stay away and to shift away to another spot.

The key success from a police point of view is that this disrupts many supply chains and criminal nets which take some time (if at all) to reach the old efficiency in new hot spots. When you look at the big picture with many hot spots forced to undergo this process it is clear that those drops in efficiency can lower the overall crime rate by a good degree.

(Some violence, like inter-gang one, might increase after the shift away from the hot spot, as they might fight over the new territory. It depends of course on the relative gains and falls. )

Firn,
But security is little more than making the situation more secure or uncomfortable enough that the problem simply moves on to someone else's backyard. In rural USA, that may only equate to shifting the thugs several hundred yards into an adjacent neighborhood where the same local law enforcement will still have to deal with the very same problem. No ?

Their goods may end up being more expensive, but we still did not get rid of them.

Why not just terminate the problem where it grew roots instead of sending them into the neighbor's yard ?

[Firn]

Firn,
But security is little more than making the situation more secure or uncomfortable enough that the problem simply moves on to someone else's backyard. In rural USA, that may only equate to shifting the thugs several hundred yards into an adjacent neighborhood where the same local law enforcement will still have to deal with the very same problem. No ?

Their goods may end up being more expensive, but we still did not get rid of them.

Why not just terminate the problem where it grew roots instead of sending them into the neighbor's yard ?

Well I just highlighted the not so obvious and intuitive effects of that NY policy referred to in the NYT. The police did of course often not just take a look around as cruising only along would have hardly made a big impact on the behaviour in this criminal market place. Beside specific missions the (in)famous stop-and-frisk was seemingly especially often adopted around such hot spots.

Wiki:

The stop-and-frisk program of New York City is a practice of the New York City Police Department by which a police officer who reasonably suspects a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a Penal Law misdemeanor, stops and questions that person, and, if the officer reasonably suspects he or she is in danger of physical injury, frisks the person stopped for weapons. The rules for stop and frisk are found in New York State Criminal Procedure Law section 140.50, and are based on the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Terry v. Ohio[1][2] About 684,000 people were stopped in 2011.[1][3][4] New York residents have questioned whether these stops are based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.[5] According to NYPD statistics, almost one in five stopped were guilty of a crime.[3] The vast majority of these people were African-American or Latino.[1][3][4]

From a criminal's point of view such activities can be of course more then a hassle, as you could be stopped with a decent probability, possibly while 'just' carrying some illegal stuff or having an outstanding warrant without doing anything 'wrong'.

In the end it is all about the opportunity costs and the specific circumstances. In a world where the criminal markets places are 'sticky' - shift not easily - and suffer a considerable drop in efficiency when disturbed such a policy could be up to a point more effective at curbing crime then the same relative amount of police routine.

P.S: Just read that piece in the Guardian...

Lieberman says that in 2010 she noted a disproportionate concentration of NYPD stop-and-frisks among young men of color: "African American and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 are 7.2% of the population and 41% of police stop-and-frisks."

Patrick Jones, a 25 year-old African American living in the Bronx, was first stopped by the police at age 12 while hanging out near an NYPD precinct. At the time motorcycles were being stolen out of a police garage, and officers accused Jones of the crime. He was handcuffed, taken to the precinct, questioned and released without charge.

Jones has dealt with police stop-and-frisks ever since. Many of those encounters, he says, have resulted in beatings.

When asked what age stop-and-frisks tend to begin for residents of his neighborhood Jones was frank, "Soon as you're able to go outside on your own. It doesn't matter how old you are."

Jones says young people in his area are targeted for little more than their appearance. "We're kids from the hood. We dress a certain way. We have certain things that we do, so we all look like criminals to them."

"Sometimes they just sweep people," he explained. "There are a bunch of people just standing somewhere; sweep. Somebody's gotta have something. Nine times out of ten they're right."

[Stan]

Move over dudes....

Number of women buying guns surges

Flash Bang Holsters ?