Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [2]

[Pettytyrant101]

As I said you need to downsize- quite frankly your country is to big, to unweildly, the nutters are in to high a number and your laws tie themselves in knots trying to deal with itall- its amazing it works at all really.

[David H]

Are you suggesting we might ship some of our more extreme nutcases back to their countries of origin (often within the UK)? I guess that would only be fair, considering you all shipped their ancestors over to us for the same reason in the first place!

[Pettytyrant101]

I told you we didnt expect them to survive- let alone found a whole nutty country!!
In hindsight the mistake was giving them guns.

But no downsize- back to counties- proper responsible sizes for a country- where you can have democracy at a local level.
And then you can conduct yourselves like sane normal countries and have wars with each other for a few hundred years before slowly forming a political union and end up back where you started.
Um hold on, I think there's a flaw in that somewhere.

[Pettytyrant101]

So Anders Behring Breivik has been found sane and sentenced in Norway to 21 years in prison.
That seems pretty light to me for the murder of 77 people and the wounding of 240 others.
21 years per person would seem more appropriate.
Afterall why stop at killing one or two people if youre going to get the same sentence anyway- may as well kill loads. Not much of a detterent.

[Mrs Figg]

21 years, is that one week in prison for every person he killed? he should have life in prison, a minimum of 40 years. what the fuck are they thinking?

[David H]

So Anders Behring Breivik has been found sane and sentenced in Norway to 21 years in prison.
That seems pretty light to me for the murder of 77 people and the wounding of 240 others.
21 years per person would seem more appropriate.
Afterall why stop at killing one or two people if youre going to get the same sentence anyway- may as well kill loads. Not much of a detterent.

Just to be contrary I'll point out that this is exactly what a lot of Americans felt when al-Megrahi only served 8 years for killing 270 people when Pan Am 103 blew up over Scotland.

[Pettytyrant101]

Megrahi wasnt given a short sentence and didnt have his sentence reduced, he was released on compassionate grounds as he was dying. Big difference.
That and noone here thinks he was actually guilty.

Breivik is quite clearly the guilty man and stands by his actions and the length of his sentence is not based on his lifespan likliness.

[David H]

I see both similarities and differences.

I was just making a point about different countries judging the severity or lenience of other countries' sentences, especially when you bring the question of deterrence into the discussion.

[Pettytyrant101]

I dont think compassionate leave to die is the same thing as the sentence handed out for a crime when speaking of deterrents.
I cant imagine knowing if you are about to drop down dead you will be allowed to die with your family would make someone more likely to commit an atrocity.
But only getting a short sentence at the offset might.

[David H]

Though I think you'll admit that the idea of compassionate leave in a country that still has a death penalty has it's own problems.

[Pettytyrant101]

Well yes. You would have to sort your state sanctioned murder out first before you can have a concept like compassion for dying criminals!

[David H]

[Pettytyrant101]

I see all nine people shot when the New York nutter started shooting were shot by the cops, not the nutter.

Now I aint blaiming the cops here, a madman pointed a gun at them.
However neither cop had ever before had to fire their gun in anger and between them they shot at him 17 times.

17 times seems quite a lot to shoot 1 man and would seem to me to make the case for dedicated armed response squads not armed officers.
These two poor cops, who are probably traumatised by having to kill someone, not to mention any guilt over collatoral they caused in my view should not be in such a position.
And its unlikely proffesional armed responses units would have had to fire so many shots.

[halfwise]

The problem is how much time it would take to deploy such units once something started happening. These cops were all likely less than a minute away by foot.

[Pettytyrant101]

Seems to work here. There have been more mass shootings in the US in the last two months than there have been here in several decades added together. But then our civilian population isn't walking about tooled up like they are in a 80's action movie.

[David H]

Seems to work here.

How does it work then? For example, if you were to make an emergency phone call right now, how long do you think it would take for the armed response unit to arrive? Do you have any idea how many units are on call and geared up at any given time?
[edit: please don't do any experiments on my account ]

Where I live it would probably be 40 minutes before I could expect to see any officer at all, and for any kind of specialty unit I would plan to put in my request a week in advance.

[halfwise]

Though I think you bring up a good point Petty: in America with no gun control worth blowing your nose at, an arms race has ensued. In countries with strong gun control, having less legal guns to worry about it's easier to tamp down the illegal guns.

right now in America if the police didn't pack heat, things would 'splode. Not a pleasant thought.

[Pettytyrant101]

Actually I can answer that David without getting arrested first as a couple of years ago there was an incident in town involving a firearm (actually there wasn't, but they thought there was) and the local armed response unit was here within ten minutes of the alarm being raised, with the main back up response unit getting there about another 15 minutes later (by helicopter) and we are in a pretty inaccessible bit of of the country.
If it happened in a city, like Glasgow, they could be on the scene in the same amount of time it would take regular police to arrive.


Halfwise- I am sure you are right about that- the problem in the US is it is probably already too late. There are simply to many weapons in civilian hands.

edit add- in the UK each regions police force has its own armed response unit. A region usually follows the political bounds- so my region for example would be Strathclyde. One of (I think) 6 regional police forces.
According to wiki- 'One particular British police force has only had to use a firearm against a suspect once in its entire history.'

[Mrs Figg]

maybe the solution is to train the cops to use guns properly, regular practice in diffusing situations etc. that way in an emergency they can cope better, or at least have had target practice. its like sending out a fireman without him ever seeing a fire, he's bound to freak out. Its just common sense.

[David H]

That's really impressive! I'm guessing there must be more cops per capita, which is another key part of the solution.

[Orwell]

I see all nine people shot when the New York nutter started shooting were shot by the cops, not the nutter.

Now I aint blaiming the cops here, a madman pointed a gun at them.
However neither cop had ever before had to fire their gun in anger and between them they shot at him 17 times.

17 times seems quite a lot to shoot 1 man and would seem to me to make the case for dedicated armed response squads not armed officers.
These two poor cops, who are probably traumatised by having to kill someone, not to mention any guilt over collatoral they caused in my view should not be in such a position.
And its unlikely proffesional armed responses units would have had to fire so many shots.

I actually agree. The next cop could be me - and it gives me no consolation I can tell you.

[David H]

maybe the solution is to train the cops to use guns properly, regular practice in diffusing situations etc. that way in an emergency they can cope better, or at least have had target practice. its like sending out a fireman without him ever seeing a fire, he's bound to freak out. Its just common sense.

Hey, maybe we could invade a country or something so they can practice!

[Mrs Figg]

invade Switzerland and steal the cheese.

[Orwell]

maybe the solution is to train the cops to use guns properly, regular practice in diffusing situations etc. that way in an emergency they can cope better, or at least have had target practice. its like sending out a fireman without him ever seeing a fire, he's bound to freak out. Its just common sense.

I actually agree - but how many police do you need to effectively police the streets (day to day) while allowing them the time to do thorough ongoing training. It's a nightmare of logistics. We are expected to be ready to deal with a myriad of things - but how do you resource the training for all of it? We can only ever be Amateurs in all trades and Masters of none! Scary really. I've done it for twenty two years (with my fingers crossed, of course!)

[Mrs Figg]

well traffic cops get advanced driving lessons, and courses on how to use a stinger. So a bit of target practice and basic safety wouldnt be too difficult surely?.