Guns: how much longer will it take ....

To kill an innocent person out of fear is what cowards do.

Nonsense. If someone wrongly perceives an innocent person as a threat, that misperception is not cowardice.

It is cowardice to immediatly act upon a fear without taking the time to assess rationally the level of threat. It's also called a knee-jerk reaction.

That's not what happens in these cases. The threat has been rationally assessed, and the assessment is that the only way to survive is to make immediate action.

Plus, these police officers are reacting according to their training. If you have a problem with what we train them to do, that is one thing. But to call them a coward for doing exactly what we have trained them to do is just wrong.

They're not trained to do that, and no, they did not rationally assess the threat leverl in many of those cases. You don't need to lie to protect murderers, you know?

Yes they are.

When they perceive a gun in the person's hand, they are assessing that there is a threat.

Everything I said is true. And once again, a mistaken shooting is not murder.

That should be: take immediate action.

A cell phone is not a threat and anyone assuming it is a mortal threat is being irrational. And anyone pumping 21 bullets into an innocent man passing a phone call is a murderer. You can argue otherwise till pigs fly, for all I care.

They thought it was a gun.

Wrong. Mistaken shootings are not murder.

Your dislike for facts does not make them any less true.

Wrongly and irrationally so, because they were afraid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44373028

Have you checked with the authorities in the UK before you posted that or anything? Would hate it if you ended up in jail for saying the wrong thing.

Be careful.

Wrong, yes.

But not irrational, and not caused by fear.

You're sooo naïve. Try and answer this: why did they see a gun instead of what was really there (a cell phone)? Does that happen to you often, to see, eg an elephant in place of what's really a car??? And why oh why did they imagine that they saw a gun? Why didn't they mistake the phone for a hammer instead, or a beer can?

Because they were afraid. They were in a black neighbourhood at night, and their prejudices told them to be afraid. They were pro'bly expecting gang members all around. As soon as they saw this black man, any black man really, they thought they "saw" a gun in his hand, and they killed him by reflex, without even thinking.

In 1994 our fighter jets killed a couple transport helicopters full of American aid workers on their way to help Kurdish refugees, because they thought they looked like Iraqi gunships preparing to massacre those Kurdish refugees.

The transport helicopters looked nothing whatsoever like helicopter gunships.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Black_Hawk_shootdown_incident

The pilots of those F-15s were certainly not in fear of attack from helicopter gunships.

WEll that was certainly an irrelevsant non sequitur.

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This argument over police shooting people 'armed' with #### (not being a gun) has always been one of the things I find quite disturbing about the US situation (re guns):

The following contains some presumptions, so feel free to correct anything you feel to be inaccurate, but it is the whole, broken down into cause & reaction, over time, that I am making comment on:

1. Given the amount of guns available to US criminals, the amount of guns carried by crazy citizens, and the amount of guns carried by citizens in general...who would want to be a police officer? Surely after you have had several close shaves with people pulling guns on you, you would start to get a little trigger happy? Every person has the right to feel safe (police included), and every person has the right to go home at the end of a days work (police included), and every person has the right to protect their life (police included). That is say - no wonder they are so jumpy, and no wonder there are so many innocent deaths

2. For corrupt police, this gives them a blanket out to murder people. I have no doubt in the world that the very vast majority of police become police for the right reasons, just as I have no doubt that some enter it for the power it gives them. And some come to enjoy that power. And others slowly become corrupted. If you look at stats objectively - this is a very small percentage, but small percentage with such power is still significant. There should not be such an ability to murder...while you also cannot remove any persons right to defend their life.

3. The suspicion (accurate or not) of police murders, causes more people to be on edge, and attack police...which raises the anxiety & fear level of police, making it more likely for them to see weapons, making it more likely for them to pull their firearm, making it more likely to shoot a person who was not actually armed.

...this state of affairs allowing corrupt police to make ever more acceptable excuses (relating to use of their firearms)

4. Leading to an even larger percentage of population to become ever more cynical & afraid & hateful of police.

5. Recurring of above patterns, resulting in a slow downward cycle

This whole state of affairs seems to start with the accessibility of guns (and the number of people carrying them in public, criminal or otherwise)

Not at all. Olivier was making an untrue claim that misperceptions of weapons where there are no weapons are due to fear.

An example of such a misperception NOT being due to fear is highly relevant.

Although I do understand that liberals find it highly inconvenient when facts prove them wrong, and they need to come up with some justification for avoiding these facts.

I accept your surrender. Next time maybe don't make up gibberish about imaginary fear being the cause of shootings and the facts won't be so hard for you to accept.