"AUSTIN, Texas — The family of an Austin, Texas, man is seeking answers after he was fatally shot by police last month on his front porch following a late-night emergency call by a neighbor. "Video and audio released Thursday show Austin police officers arrived Nov. 15, yelled 'drop your gun,' then fired at Rajan Moonesinghe, who was holding an AR-15-style weapon. "Officers were responding to a 911 call requesting police and mental health support because a man was holding a long gun outside in the residential neighborhood. The caller, who was not identified in the recording, said the man had approached him earlier in the day to ask if he had noticed anything suspicious in the area. "When officers arrived, Ring security camera footage released by police shows Moonesinghe had just fired two shots into his home. "Moments earlier, the security camera footage shows Moonesinghe speaking in the direction of his house while pointing the gun inside, but it is not clear why.... "Moonesinghe’s older brother said in a statement that officers 'shot first and asked questions later.' Johann Moonesinghe said he wants city officials and the Travis County district attorney to hold the officer who killed his brother accountable.... "El Khattary, a friend of the Moonesinghe brothers who lives five doors away, said Rajan Moonesinghe was concerned about crime in the area. "Khattary, who said a man once jumped his fence before fleeing, said he recently spoke with Moonesinghe about his safety concerns following a different criminal incident near the neighborhood." https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...39d5f4-72b7-11ed-867c-8ec695e4afcd_story.html A gun owner who is concerned about crime in his neighborhood fires two shots into his own home. Police arrive and open fire (possibly thinking he's trying to shoot someone inside). Ironically, his decision to own and use a gun for self defense ends up costing him his life. The US has a very high cop on civilian death rate compared to other developed nations. Widespread gun ownership creates an atmosphere of fear and paranoia in which the police know that at any time an innocent person can be shot at. They become more likely to shoot first and ask questions later if they suspect that someone might be armed.
The real paranoia is in those who want to prevent honest people from owning guns-it is as nuts as thinking that criminals are going to obey gun laws
I will concede that there is some truth in this thesis, but it is also true that gun control laws are taking part in a paranoia of their own. And it should be pointed out that implementing gun control will not completely get rid of this paranoia.
I think the question that your story raises is an important one, and that is what exactly should the proper procedure or etiquette be. It's common for one side to shoot another person if that person is holding a gun and the first side feels threatened for any reason. I think there are some ways to resolve this conundrum, but they require some serious thinking. (Something most people don't seem to want to, or be able to do) Your proffered solution, on the other hand, seems to be to take the right to hold guns away from everyone except police and give police the legal right to shoot on sight anyone holding a gun. But that solution does not completely eliminate the conundrum either, see this thread: Police shoot at police for holding gun In other words, even your solution hasn't completely solved the enigma of the issue, it has only greatly minimized it.
There was another recent story about police shooting and killing a man at a nightclub for not immediately dropping his gun. The man had just shot another man who had begun shooting at people, and may have saved many people's lives in the crowd through his actions. When police arrived on the scene they immediately assumed (mistakenly) that the man who they saw holding the gun was the one who had started shooting at people. Allegedly police ordered the man to drop his gun, but he either did not do it quickly enough, began moving the wrong way, or was not able to immediately hear or understand what the police officers were ordering him to do. Despite potentially saving many people's lives and being a hero, he also acted unwisely, and died as a result. You might also remember a scene from the James Bond film Skyfall where the villain disguises himself as a police officer and gets into a guarded building by killing people, and avoids being shot because of everyone's reluctance to shoot him because he appears to be a police officer. It ends up causing confusion and chaos and the police guarding the building are unable to function and start shooting at each other, not knowing who to shoot. video here: SKYFALL | Silva attacks M at the government board of inquiry - YouTube
An armed society is a paranoid society Well sure, I suppose there is some level of paranoia involved in people who need to carry a gun on their being to feel comfortable being in public. But I fully support their right to carry said gun. Hell, carry two if that helps you feel safe in public.
Sadly, this is 100% true. Police in less armed societies are much less hair-trigger. They have the luxury of being able to consider 'both sides' of a situation, which naturally results in less deaths of innocent people at the hands of police. This particular case would have been regarded as a psych incident, and would have been handled differently. The guy would likely still be alive, IOW.
Ok, but what are you proposing to do about that? I'm sure someone familiar with LE from a professional perspective will be able to explain to you why, even if all guns are totally illegal, its still not smart to assume people are unarmed... Anecdotally, folks walk around in my town with visible weapons quite commonly, presumably at least as many if not more are concealing. They don't shoot at anyone and no one shoots at them. Usually just sidearms, but at least once someone strolled down the sidewalk by my house in broad daylight carrying an AR. He didn't shoot anyone and no one shot at him. In fact nothing happened at all. And I live within a literal stones throw of the police department. Thats all to say, I think its a lot more complicated than just 'cops scared of armed citizens.' Cops around here are pro-2A and seem to be under the impression that crime is low due in part to criminals being more afraid of getting shot by their intended victims. Now, maybe they're just pro-gun because this is politically a very red area... but suffice to say, we have very high gun ownership rates, very low crime rates and very low altercations/shootings by or with police rates.
If you search “defensive gun usage" (DGU) you’ll find it happens anywhere from 500k – 3.5 million times annually (in the US). The raw numbers come from the CDC, most recently from a study ordered by President Obama in 2013. While injuries and fatalities resulting from those encounters are delineated, peaceful resolutions are not. Depending on who’s digging into the data, DGUs where the weapon is brandished but not fired & no one is hurt occur anywhere from 200k - 1 million times every year. Whatever the actual tally, it’s not insignificant. Speak for yourself. I've lived here all my life, and have never felt fearful or paranoid; you've cited no evidence to make your case. Oh, wait - you posted an anecdote! Fair enough. Here are two more: When I was an infant we took a day trip to the mountains and stopped at one of my parents’ favorite spots. During our stay a couple bikers rolled in. Dad could tell they were trouble and loaded wife & kid into the car. During the load up one of the bikers shouted at dad to “hand over summa that slant eyed pu$$y!” Loudmouth wheeled his bike about 4 feet off the back bumper and dismounted. He walked to the driver’s side window and leaned in to find himself looking down the barrel of a .357. He and his compadre saddled up and rode off. 25 years later I owned a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda. One day I towed it to a building where I was going to work on it. As I pulled onto the property there were a couple guys about my age sharing a crack pipe. I rolled down the window and said “Hate to tell you guys, but this is private property and you’ll need to clear off.” They both snarled and cursed. One of them picked up a piece of rebar and both advanced. I let them see my pistol and told them to simmer down. Both men split. In both instances: no shots fired and nobody hurt. Would you prefer that we had been unarmed on those occasions, the better to assuage the fear & paranoia you're so concerned about? I couldn't care less that you & your ilk choose to be unarmed (if that is in fact your preference). More power to you. Your choice in the matter is unenforceable upon me and mine. I'll continue to use my CCW privileges, regardless of any caterwauling emanating from the left.
That may be true, but you know WHY that is? Half the reason is that less armed societies coincidentally happen to be lower violent crime societies - typically all those White countries, but also including East Asian societies that have lots of order (Guess what? It's genetic). In the "more violent" societies, even where strict gun control exists, there are still plenty of guns on the streets. They are just illegal guns. Let's think about this and take a look at exactly what countries you are referring to. The pattern seems to be any developed highly urbanized society that has a large percentage of black people, the police there are going to be more "hair-trigger". Ever been to Mexico? The police there have large military-looking guns mounted onto the back of trucks, and they just go around in those trucks and it is normal. As the old saying goes, correlation does not imply causation, and we need to look a little more carefully at why any correlation seems to exist.
Nobody thinks criminals are going to obey laws that's why nobody ever addresses that. It's an excuse to make you into a criminal.
Well that's the issue. Everyone in this forum lives in different places, even different parts within the same country. We all have a tendency to assume everyone else's circumstances and situation are identical to our own. What may be true for your surroundings may not be true for mine, or his.
Despite all these claimed self defense gun uses, homicides are still more likely to occur in homes where guns are kept. I don't care how high of an estimate of you can come up with if it's not resulting in less lethal violence in the real world. The US has a very high cop on civilian death rate compared to other developed nations. That's not an anecdote.
According to Kellermann, even non-firearm homicides are higher in homes with firearms. Of course, Kellermann also found that living along or renting increased the risk of homicide in the home significantly more than having a gun on the home did. Do you think any city is going to disarm their police force?
1) it is hard for someone to be shot in a house where no firearm ever was present (duh) 2) many of the homes that are listed in anti rights studies are ones where the gun used to harm someone was NOT kept in the home by the owners. rather it was brought into the home by a non-resident. Kellerman and others claimed that those homes counted as "homes with guns" even if the gun was not kept in the house
For those unfamiliar with the Kellerman cite, it is a thoroughly debunked study from the Clinton years which argued that gun owners were nearly 3x more likely to to be killed in their home than non gun owners, and therefore gun ownership provides no statistical protective benefit. Gun grabbers have been shrieking “Kellerman!” ever since. Kellerman restricted its study samples to people killed in their own homes, and deliberately excluded instances where intruders were shot and/or killed by residents defending themselves. So their conclusion that gun ownership = no protection derives from their own failure to document a single case where gun owners successfully sent the bad guys packing. It also found that gun ownership ranked #5 out of six risk factors - behind illicit drug use, being a renter, any household member having been involved in multiple physical altercations, living alone, and a household member with an arrest record.There are also serious questions about the control group Kellerman used for the study; less than 36% were gun owners, in comparison to the 49% (at the time) of Americans who owned guns. Kellerman is a case study in cooking the books. Still curious to know if you’d prefer that me & my dad had been unarmed during the incidents I mentioned earlier.
the anti gun movement is consistently dishonest. One study I read years ago, claimed that homes with guns are x times more likely to have shootings and 43/46 homes cited were ones where the gun used for the shooting was brought to the home by the shooter. (a non-resident of the home).
well if someone breaks into your home you shoot and kill them that's a homicide. And in that case I would say good. Now if you're trying to imply that people who have guns just murder each other you are a gaslighting. Most gun owners engaged unless criminal behavior then police. but this is an irrational fear to believe possession of firearms equals violence is to completely misunderstand reality. Violence is not a component of gun ownership. So go live there or join the police department or run for local office where you can increase enforcement of law. To pretend this is caused by gun owners is to deny reality.
I won't agree that an armed society is a paranoid society. Keeping firearms because you want to have it in case you need it is no more paranoid than having car insurance or a fire extinguisher that's just called being prepared. I carry around in my vehicle a set of jumper cables I'm not paranoid that I may need them I've needed them before. Gun control is absolutely not about safety and it's not about preventing crime it is about disarmament of the citizens.
Kellerman compared a case group (homicide victims) to a control group (living people). You say that there were more gun owners in the case (homicide victim) group. Think about that for a moment.... It certainly doesn't support the narrative that guns are great self defense tools if homicide victims are more likely to have owned guns than people who did not die. Kellerman's research has been confirmed by other studies.
If only they'd leave the criminals out of the case and control groups, so the law abiding would understand the true risks. Kellermann still found that living alone or renting is much more risky than having a gun in the home.
