[QUOTE=retina;500614]Making guns illegal won't stop people possessing guns, but it will make identifying the bad actors with guns really easy.[/QUOTE]
It will make the baddies more brazen and deadly, and make it easier for officers to mistake plainclothes cops, off-duty cops, security guards, PIs, etc. for baddies. It's behavior that matters, not property.
Taking the "stop people possessing guns" to mean all civilians, all type firearms, game management switches from a profit center for the state and tourist draw and economic boon for business and source of protein for the working class, to a net cost and increased cause of traffic deaths. My former neighbor lost a niece to collision with a deer flung into her car by another car. It's a low rate occurrence overall, of order 2-3 ppm annually, but for her niece it was 100%, and occurrence would increase with animal numbers.

Most law enforcement go as much by a contact's behavior upon contact as anything. If you're empty handed and compliant, you're good. If you follow commands and answer questions, you're probably ok. If you run etc you're not. Similar applies to encounters with unfamiliar civilians; people quickly assess threatening or not. The first officer to the scene of the end of the chase from Sutherland Springs said put down your weapon and come out slowly to the shooter. When Willeford (who had confronted the shooter) proceeded to put down his rifle, previously aimed at the suspect's vehicle, the officer reportedly said "Not you, sir". Willeford was not a problem, he was his backup.

But yes, it does seem less unsafe to be empty handed when the officers roll up to a shooting scene. Some can be jumpy or outright PTSD afflicted.

I remember a traffic stop long ago and not thinking about it, put both hands in the front pockets of my shorts. I was directed to remove them slowly. I think my smile and almost laugh at the absurdity of me being perceived a potential threat to the officer was as reassuring as empty hands slowly emerging. Or maybe he'd already run my plate and saw a clean record, and he'd seen I was acting like the car owner, not a car thief, not a problem. That officer was just being prudent.

What if...
 

What if there was a breakthrough in treating certain mental illnesses, or understanding their mechanism or the operation of the brain, that was transformative, comparable in impact to the discovery of penicillin and the developments that followed? Or the advent of the germ theory of infectious disease? Or development of effective vaccinations?

It may be coming, from a direction described in this 2015 article. [url]https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-vaccine-for-depression-1136204885[/url]

What if 2
 

What if some mental illness is somehow linked to beneficial abilities like high creativity?
[url]https://getpocket.com/explore/item/secrets-of-the-creative-brain-651487502[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;500625]I remember a traffic stop long ago and not thinking about it, put both hands in the front pockets of my shorts. I was directed to remove them slowly. I think my smile and almost laugh at the absurdity of me being perceived a potential threat to the officer was as reassuring as empty hands slowly emerging. Or maybe he'd already run my plate and saw a clean record, and he'd seen I was acting like the car owner, not a car thief, not a problem. That officer was just being prudent.[/QUOTE]The society is deeply broken when everyone is viewed as a potential threat first, and only believed to be harmless once they act sufficiently subservient and obedient. :loco:

[QUOTE=retina;500628]The society is deeply broken when everyone is viewed as a potential threat first, and only believed to be harmless once they act sufficiently subservient and obedient. :loco:[/QUOTE]
Nope; not broken. It only takes a few bad actors to make it dangerous. Law enforcement is just a riskier occupation than some. I don't blame officers for being cautious or alert. I want them to go home at night whole too, along with those they encounter who are up to no harm. Not like my friend's husband (Grant County Sheriff's Deputy Tom Reuter), who caught a shotgun blast from a teenager he'd stopped to help, leaving her (my eventual friend) to raise 5 children alone. Or Trevor Casper, who helped stop a bank robber/murderer after already being wounded by him on his first solo WI State Patrol day.

In the case of the Harvest 91 concert it was one bad actor and thousands responding to help others including at risk to themselves.

"sufficiently subservient and obedient" What an odd choice of words for friendly or decent or nonviolent. Maybe get out more, away from being surrounded by the minions.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;500622]
It also seems that, in many cases, especially when the killer is a peace officer, the victim having been black is deemed sufficient justification -- either by no charges being pressed, or by a trial jury reaching a verdict of "Not Guilty," even if the victim was repeatedly shot in the back from a distance of 20 feet or more.
...
in the eyes of the law -- unborn fetuses are not persons. Frozen embryos being stored in a lab are generally considered to be property. Someone who rips a fetus from a pregnant woman and causes its death can't be charged with homicide for killing that fetus, but rather "Unlawful termination of a pregnancy." Of course, if the woman dies from the attack, [I]that[/I]'s a homicide.

As to "controlling the population" in terms of numbers, the population of the USA might be decreasing, were it not for immigration.
[/QUOTE]
Please provide a reference or two for that first one. I know there have been some egregious uses of force in the news, and others that were claimed but contradicted by the facts. And "not guilty" is not the same as "innocent".

Fetuses are subject to protection under law or not, depending on whether their would-be killer(s) are their mother or her doctor or someone else and various specifics.
Fetal homicide is a crime in 38 US states and under federal law, excepting abortion, per [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foeticide[/URL] Opinions vary as to whether that exception's right. And there was a recent successful prosecution and 22 year sentence for _attempted_ abortion by a man spiking his girlfriend's drink. [URL]https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2018/10/09/judge-imposes-22-year-sentence-case-involving-abortion-inducing-drug/1567018002/[/URL]

Subtract immigration, and subtract abortion, and the US would be numerically similar to the population status quo.


[QUOTE]But this is getting away from the topic of guns. So, perhaps we have to provide fetuses with guns, so they can defend themselves against abortionists.[/QUOTE]Surely you realize they can't meet the current age or training requirements for carrying concealed, or afford the many costs, rack the slide, work the trigger, etc. Seems like it could also be hazardous to the obstetrician. No, their protection is up to others.

[LEFT][QUOTE]Surely you realize they can't meet the current age or training requirements for carrying concealed, or afford the many costs, rack the slide, work the trigger, etc. Seems like it could also be hazardous to the obstetrician. No, their protection is up to others. [/QUOTE][/LEFT]
Shirley! You need to recalibrate your irony detector. :razz:

[QUOTE=kriesel;500630]Surely you realize they can't meet the current age or training requirements for carrying concealed, or afford the many costs, rack the slide, work the trigger, etc. [b]Seems like it could also be hazardous to the obstetrician[/b].[/QUOTE]So you are saying that guns are dangerous to those that are just trying to help. Say it ain't so.

:loco:

[QUOTE=kriesel;500630]Please provide a reference or two for that first one. I know there have been some egregious uses of force in the news, and others that were claimed but contradicted by the facts. And "not guilty" is not the same as "innocent".[/QUOTE]
My memory was a little foggy on the most egregious case that had come to mind: The state murder trial of Michael Slager ended in a hung jury, not a verdict -- even though video showed him drawing a bead on the fleeing Walter Scott from almost 20 feet away, and shooting him in the back multiple times -- and then, placing his stun gun next to the body, apparently in an attempt to back up his fabricated "self defense" story. Slager did eventually plead Guilty to excessive force, and received a stiff sentence for Federal civil-rights violations.

The shooting of Daniel Shaver in Mesa, AZ fits the bill reasonably well. He was unarmed, crawling on the ground, begging for his life, when a police officer shot him, saying he thought the man was reaching for a gun. The officer was tried and acquitted.

In the Slager case, it was only a bystander's video of the incident that prevented a police coverup. And even with video showing him deliberately shooting the man in the back, and staging the scene afterwards, the jury hung.

In the murder of Lacquan McDonald, authorities sat on the incriminating police video for well over a year, and only after its release blew the officer's account of a life-and-death struggle out of the water, and showed him shooting the guy in the back as he walked away, did they move to file charges. The case was so clearcut, the jury found the officer Guilty of killing McDonald, but Not Guilty of official misconduct -- despite the absolutely damning evidence that he had falsified his report.

The paucity of cases in which officers are tried and acquitted is due in part to the rarity of cases in which charges are even filed. With the advent of police dash- and body cams, and bystanders making their own videos, this may be changing.

In US law, there is no verdict of "Innocent." A verdict of "Not Guilty" means that the prosecution failed to prove its case. It could mean that the jury seriously doubted the defendant did the crime, but it could also mean they thought the defendant had done it, but that the prosecution had failed to prove it. And, of course, it could [i]also[/i] mean that the jury decided that the law did not adequately provide for the particular circumstances, and nullified (e.g. the victim was black).

But a verdict of "Not Guilty" is the same as "Innocent" in one respect: the defendant "walks."

[QUOTE=kriesel;500620] <snip>
It's illogical to decry the numbers of deaths at the concert and a number of other occasions on the one hand and claim it can't be predicted as a possibility on the other.
It's not the first time someone used a tower as a sniper nest on civilians or officials. Whitman, 1966 in Texas as I recall. Kennedy assassination, 1963. Perhaps others I don't recall. <snip>[/QUOTE]
It is not logical, on the one hand to dismiss gun deaths as "not in the top ten causes" and state that it would be better to work on safe driving and healthy living; and, on the other, to call it "criminally shameful" to fail to provide security for an open-air concert that's on a par with protecting the President from assassination.

So, let's see. You've come up with two instances of a sniper shooting people in the USA from a high vantage point, prior to 2017. In fact, both were over 50 years before. Neither was a concert venue. I will say, though, that with the assassination of JFK, the fact that that vantage point wasn't covered by the Secret Service or local LEO was a shameful failure of security. This [i]was[/i] supposed to be protecting the President, after all.

You need to be more careful with statistics. After all, you've already had to walk back your assertion that 33,000 gun homicides a year was an "oft-quoted statistic." it isn't.

The phrase "predict as a possibility" is nonsense. A [i]possibility[/i] is something that [i]can[/i] or [i]might[/i] happen. It may even be something that inevitably [i]will[/i] happen, but may not happen very often, and is not predictable in the sense of there being no way of saying [i]when[/i] it will happen. A [i]prediction[/i] is a statement that something [i]will[/i] happen, usually in a specific period, sometimes with an precise time frame. Times of sunrise and sunset; rising and setting of the moon, stars, and planets; lunar and solar eclipses; tomorrow's weather -- these are [i]predictions[/i]. Earthquake forecasts are a lot iffier about when. There is an x per cent chance that this fault will move in the next y years.

In any winter, there is a [i]possibility[/i] that it will snow in places like Atlana GA, Miami FL, and Tupelo, MS. But it doesn't snow very often in these places, so they may not have fleets of snow plows and stockpiles of salt and sand for those rare occasions. I think the security for outdoor concerts takes a similar view of mass shootings. They've got much more likely hazards to deal with. Hot weather. Cold weather. Thunderstorms. Rowdy drunks. People getting into fights. Drug overdoses. Crowds panicking or otherwise frantic to get from A to B, and stampeding. The latter one hasn't happened at a US open-air concert recently AFAIK, but it did happen at a Who concert in Cincinnati in 1979, killing 11 people.

I see people comparing gun death stats from one US state to another US state and coming to conclusions based upon differing laws between the states. But this is the wrong approach IMO. Do a much different comparison. Compare one country to another. Let's say we compare any of the other "four eyes" countries (where gun laws are much more sane) to the USA. We find that gun deaths in the USA are similar to the road deaths. But in the other four countries gun deaths are much lower than road deaths. That is a much fairer comparison.

If you make guns illegal for everyone then ...[list][*]It is easy to spot bad actors with guns since there won't be any "good guys" with guns[*]The price and availability of black market guns puts them out of reach for most people (black market prices for guns are very high and not easy to find)[*]The police don't act like dicks at simple traffic stops (telling you to remove your hands from your pockets slowly) because the expectation of violence is very different[*]The citizens are not forced to be all obedient and subservient and kowtow to police for fear of being shot because of a misunderstanding about what is in their pockets[*]You can walk around the streets without having to worry about some random crazy idiot deciding to shoot you (and, no, black market gun purchasers won't be random crazy idiots, they are decidedly non-random and won't be interested in you unless you have direct dealings with them)[*]People [i]earn[/i] respect, rather than demand it with a gun pointed at you.[/list]
There is no way to defend the argument that somehow, magically, more guns would make everyone safer and we'd have less violence and fewer deaths. The comparisons across countries shows the figures; fewer guns overall leads to fewer deaths overall. Seems quite clear to me.