quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

Vincent, what I am trying to say, is that there are times that openly carrying a gun is smart as putting a milk bucket under a bull, or pouring 5 gallons of charcoal lighter fluid on a barbeque grill and throwing a match on it.

Owning a firearm is a right under the constitution. However that right expects the people practicing that right to have a bit of common sense.

And to be honest, anyone openly carrying an AR, white or black, at that rally was not the smartest move.

Or to put it another way, it was about as smart as a Midland Lee high school grad attending the protest wearing a Rebel Pride t shirt...

In less serious contexts:

My attending a Jim Ned football game wearing my favorite Wylie Bulldogs sweat shirt. I can legally do so, would it be smart, hell no. Nor would it be smart to wear a Vikings jacket to a Green Bay game at Lambo field.

Lets face it, humans are emotional and notoriously stupid, especially in groups.

persnnally I don't think open carry is agood idea, it makes you a target, and le3adsto unfortunate misunderstandings like this one.

Bama, the only time I openly carry a gun is as far away from people as possible.

Hell I got stopped this morning for being in a mixed minority neighborhood with two rifles hanging in the gun rack of my truck.

The white cop that stopped me admitted he stopped me was because I was white in a mostly non white neighborhood with guns in my truck.

While I had both hands on the roof of my truck he called the friend of mine I just dropped off (a local cop as well, and African American) to verify the story I had just dropped him off.

My friend actually had to get dressed and come to where we were to give a positive ID.

Hey lucy, how is that for "white Privilege?"

On a side note, we got two big boars and a couple of sows last night and made 600 bucks each for hog eradication.

quote:

Police Killings of Blacks

There has been considerable concern about police killings of blacks, especially after Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Wilson is white and Brown was black and unarmed. Although an extensive investigation by the Department of Justice found that Officer Wilson acted appropriately in response to Brown’s physical attacks and subsequent threats, the shooting provoked riots and gave impetus to the Black Lives Matter movement, which claims that racist police officers routinely kill unarmed blacks.

This claim has been difficult to verify, since there are no national statistics on police shootings. Moreover, as noted above, broad arrest statistics and academic studies do not support the view that arrests are biased, so there is little reason to think shootings would be biased. The Black Lives Matter movement has not been driven by data but by the deaths of specific people such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Freddie Gray.

Freddie Gray’s death, due to injuries after his arrest in Baltimore, also provoked riots and was taken up with great energy by Black Lives Matter. Three of the six officers charged in Gray’s death were black — and they were charged with the most serious crimes — but the incident is still cited as an example of police racism.

In the absence of government data, the Washington Post investigated every reported case of a fatal shooting by the police during 2015. It found 990 cases, with the following racial distribution of victims:

White: 50.0 percent (495 victims)

Black: 26.1 percent (258)

Hispanic: 17.4 percent (172)

Asian: 1.4 percent (14)

Other/Unknown: 5.2 percent (51)

Given their proportions in the population, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police, a Hispanic was 1.24 times more likely, and an Asian was only one third as likely. It is reasonable to expect people of different races to find themselves in potentially lethal confrontations with the police in proportion to their likelihood to commit violent crime, with blacks most likely and Asians least likely.

As noted in Table 4 above, in California — a large state that keeps consistent statistics on race and ethnicity — blacks are arrested for violent crimes at 5.35 times the white rate, and Hispanics at 1.42 times the white rate. The low likelihood of Asians being killed by police is in keeping with low Asian arrest rates for violent crime. The black and Hispanic multiples for police shooting deaths are well within the arrest multiples — the black multiple is less than half — and certainly do not suggest undisciplined police violence.

Moreover, FBI data show that from 2005 to 2014, blacks accounted for 40 percent of police killings. Since blacks were approximately 13 percent of the population, it meant they were 4.46 times more likely than people of other races to kill a police officer.

In its study, the Post found that men were 22.9 times more likely than women to be shot and killed by officers. No one suggests that law enforcement bias accounts for this huge multiple, which is undoubtedly caused by differences in behavior between men and women. In the case of racial multiples, police bias cannot be ruled out, but it is reasonable to assume that the multiples are explained by race differences in behavior.

The Washington Post noted further that all but 93 of the 990 people fatally shot by police were armed, usually with a firearm or knife. The unarmed victims had the following racial distribution:

White: 34.4 percent (32 victims)

Black: 40.8 percent (38)

Hispanic: 19.4 percent (18)

Asian: 0 percent (0)

Unknown: 5.4 percent (5)

An unarmed black was therefore 5.6 times more likely than an unarmed white to be shot by police, and a Hispanic was 2.6 times more likely. The black multiple is certainly high, though not that much higher than the California violent-arrest multiple of 5.35 noted above.

There is no obvious explanation for why unarmed blacks were shot and killed at a white multiple that was twice that for armed blacks. If police bias is the cause, there is no clear reason why it should be worse in the case of unarmed suspects. The sample size of 93 is small, so random events produce a large effect.

It may be that race differences in how suspects behave when they are arrested explain at least part of the difference. There are no national data, but a five-year study of non-felony arrests in San Francisco found that blacks were 9.6 times more likely than whites (including Hispanics) to be charged with resisting arrest, and whites were 8.6 times more likely than Asians to be so charged. In Chicago, from September 2014 to September 2015, blacks accounted for 77 percent of arrests for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest (page 4 of report), meaning they were 6.8 times more likely than non-blacks to be arrested on these charges. If these findings are typical, they help explain why the arrest of a black non-felony suspect — who would more than likely be unarmed — could escalate into potentially lethal violence.

The Post’s analysis was intended to throw light on police bias but failed to indicate the races of the officers involved in fatal shootings. This would be useful information. A 2015 Department of Justice study (page 3) of police shootings in Philadelphia found racial differences in “threat perception failure,” that is, cases in which an officer shot an unarmed suspect because the officer thought the suspect was armed. Black officers were nearly twice as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black (11.4 percent of all shootings by black officers vs. 6.8 percent of all shootings by white officers). The percentage of such errors by Hispanic officers — 16.7 percent — was even higher.

Black officers may be somewhat more prone to error in general. About 12 percent of police officers in the United States are black. Between 2005 and 2015, 16.6 percent of the 54 officers criminally charged for fatally shooting someone while on duty were black.

Homicide is a serious problem for black men. Since at least 2002 and up to 2013 (the latest data available), murder was the leading cause of death for black men, ages 15 to 34. Their murderers are almost always other black men. According to a Department of Justice report, (page 13), from 1980 to 2008, 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by blacks.

By contrast, the 256 police judicial killings of blacks in 2015 would be only 4.2 percent of the 6,095 blacks who were murdered in 2014 (the most recent year for which national data are available). The 38 unarmed blacks killed by police accounted for just 0.6 percent. Police shootings of unarmed blacks is a very small problem compared to murder in the black community.

quote:

Police Killings of Blacks

There has been considerable concern about police killings of blacks, especially after Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Wilson is white and Brown was black and unarmed. Although an extensive investigation by the Department of Justice found that Officer Wilson acted appropriately in response to Brown’s physical attacks and subsequent threats, the shooting provoked riots and gave impetus to the Black Lives Matter movement, which claims that racist police officers routinely kill unarmed blacks.

This claim has been difficult to verify, since there are no national statistics on police shootings. Moreover, as noted above, broad arrest statistics and academic studies do not support the view that arrests are biased, so there is little reason to think shootings would be biased. The Black Lives Matter movement has not been driven by data but by the deaths of specific people such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Freddie Gray.

Freddie Gray’s death, due to injuries after his arrest in Baltimore, also provoked riots and was taken up with great energy by Black Lives Matter. Three of the six officers charged in Gray’s death were black — and they were charged with the most serious crimes — but the incident is still cited as an example of police racism.

In the absence of government data, the Washington Post investigated every reported case of a fatal shooting by the police during 2015. It found 990 cases, with the following racial distribution of victims:

White: 50.0 percent (495 victims)

Black: 26.1 percent (258)

Hispanic: 17.4 percent (172)

Asian: 1.4 percent (14)

Other/Unknown: 5.2 percent (51)

Given their proportions in the population, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police, a Hispanic was 1.24 times more likely, and an Asian was only one third as likely. It is reasonable to expect people of different races to find themselves in potentially lethal confrontations with the police in proportion to their likelihood to commit violent crime, with blacks most likely and Asians least likely.

As noted in Table 4 above, in California — a large state that keeps consistent statistics on race and ethnicity — blacks are arrested for violent crimes at 5.35 times the white rate, and Hispanics at 1.42 times the white rate. The low likelihood of Asians being killed by police is in keeping with low Asian arrest rates for violent crime. The black and Hispanic multiples for police shooting deaths are well within the arrest multiples — the black multiple is less than half — and certainly do not suggest undisciplined police violence.

Moreover, FBI data show that from 2005 to 2014, blacks accounted for 40 percent of police killings. Since blacks were approximately 13 percent of the population, it meant they were 4.46 times more likely than people of other races to kill a police officer.

In its study, the Post found that men were 22.9 times more likely than women to be shot and killed by officers. No one suggests that law enforcement bias accounts for this huge multiple, which is undoubtedly caused by differences in behavior between men and women. In the case of racial multiples, police bias cannot be ruled out, but it is reasonable to assume that the multiples are explained by race differences in behavior.

The Washington Post noted further that all but 93 of the 990 people fatally shot by police were armed, usually with a firearm or knife. The unarmed victims had the following racial distribution:

White: 34.4 percent (32 victims)

Black: 40.8 percent (38)

Hispanic: 19.4 percent (18)

Asian: 0 percent (0)

Unknown: 5.4 percent (5)

An unarmed black was therefore 5.6 times more likely than an unarmed white to be shot by police, and a Hispanic was 2.6 times more likely. The black multiple is certainly high, though not that much higher than the California violent-arrest multiple of 5.35 noted above.

There is no obvious explanation for why unarmed blacks were shot and killed at a white multiple that was twice that for armed blacks. If police bias is the cause, there is no clear reason why it should be worse in the case of unarmed suspects. The sample size of 93 is small, so random events produce a large effect.

It may be that race differences in how suspects behave when they are arrested explain at least part of the difference. There are no national data, but a five-year study of non-felony arrests in San Francisco found that blacks were 9.6 times more likely than whites (including Hispanics) to be charged with resisting arrest, and whites were 8.6 times more likely than Asians to be so charged. In Chicago, from September 2014 to September 2015, blacks accounted for 77 percent of arrests for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest (page 4 of report), meaning they were 6.8 times more likely than non-blacks to be arrested on these charges. If these findings are typical, they help explain why the arrest of a black non-felony suspect — who would more than likely be unarmed — could escalate into potentially lethal violence.

The Post’s analysis was intended to throw light on police bias but failed to indicate the races of the officers involved in fatal shootings. This would be useful information. A 2015 Department of Justice study (page 3) of police shootings in Philadelphia found racial differences in “threat perception failure,” that is, cases in which an officer shot an unarmed suspect because the officer thought the suspect was armed. Black officers were nearly twice as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black (11.4 percent of all shootings by black officers vs. 6.8 percent of all shootings by white officers). The percentage of such errors by Hispanic officers — 16.7 percent — was even higher.

Black officers may be somewhat more prone to error in general. About 12 percent of police officers in the United States are black. Between 2005 and 2015, 16.6 percent of the 54 officers criminally charged for fatally shooting someone while on duty were black.

Homicide is a serious problem for black men. Since at least 2002 and up to 2013 (the latest data available), murder was the leading cause of death for black men, ages 15 to 34. Their murderers are almost always other black men. According to a Department of Justice report, (page 13), from 1980 to 2008, 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by blacks.

By contrast, the 256 police judicial killings of blacks in 2015 would be only 4.2 percent of the 6,095 blacks who were murdered in 2014 (the most recent year for which national data are available). The 38 unarmed blacks killed by police accounted for just 0.6 percent. Police shootings of unarmed blacks is a very small problem compared to murder in the black community.