LEO LODD statistics, 2012

According the Officer Down Memorial Page, there were 126 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2012. That inflates things a bit, because 18 of them were police dogs.


8 police dogs died of heat exhaustion
2 K9s killed in transportation related incidents.
6 K9s were shot
1 died from a fall

 Let's take a look at what happened to the 108 human cops, shall we?
Of those 108:


There were 42 officers killed in transportation incidents, 39% of those killed.
3 from aircraft, 35 in auto accidents, 5 were struck by vehicles as pedestrians.

16 of them (15%) died from medical problems, or from accidents:
2 were killed by unspecified "medical emergencies"
1 died from hepatitis C that he contracted in 1983
1 died from complications of a surgery to repair an on duty knee injury
2 cops were killed by falling from heights
1 died from injuries sustained in 2009 when he fell off of a horse
1 died from heat exhaustion
7 died from heart attacks
1 killed in a training accident when an instructor threw him and caused a head injury



Of the 17 cops killed by non-firearm assaults:
11 were run down by criminals
1 was killed with an assailant's bare hands
5 were stabbed. All 5 were stabbed by jail or prison inmates.

Of the 43 firearm deaths:
1 was killed by her husband, using her own gun
1 was killed by an assailant who overpowered the officer and shot him with his own gun
2 were shot by other cops in cases of mistaken identity
2 were shot and killed when a prisoner that was in custody, was handcuffed in a patrol car, and had already been searched, produced a handgun and shot them.
1 was ambushed and killed in his driveway by a convicted felon that he had arrested many times over a 40 year career.
1 was shot in 1965 and died in 2012. Hard to say this death is due to being shot when you live another 48 years.
2 were ambushed by domestic terrorists while working off duty jobs in their patrol cars.

By weapon type
19 were shot by unknown firearms
18 with handguns
1 with a shotgun
3 with unknown type rifles
4 with so called "assault weapons"

So out of the 108 cops killed in 2012, there were 36 cops killed by assaults on the street by people that they came in contact with. The rest of the deaths were accidents, medical problems, being shot by other cops, by their spouses, and other incidents. It is a myth that cops have a job that is so dangerous as to require that they disarm and subjugate every citizen that they come into contact with for "officer safety."

If they really cared about officer safety, they would take away their lights and sirens, and force them to drive at reasonable speeds. That would have saved the lives of the same number of officers, and not led to violating people's rights and roughing them up.

Defense

A strong defense of the nation is important. Our military is hard at work, defending us from the enemy. They were recently seen drilling in the skies over Houston and Miami.

With the news that the president is shutting down NORAD radar surveillance in the southern US, while at the same time stepping up its monitoring of its own citizens, it appears as though the government doesn't feel that the threat to its survival is an external one. Who is the enemy that our military is preparing to face?

Force is not always inappropriate

This post is about the "Zero Aggression Principle" that many libertarians use as a litmus test. Many believe that it is ALWAYS wrong to initiate force against another. From the linked page:

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." 

I think that it must be nice to live in such a simple world. The first problem that I have with this idea is how you choose to define "force." What if a person is shitting in your yard? Is he initiating force? Or would you be, if you physically remove him?

What about a petulant child the refuses to obey his parents? When the parents attempt to discipline the child, at what point is the discipline considered force? Confining him to a corner (timeout)? Spanking?

Then there is the case where a person is out of his mind. Can we, in good conscience, protect him from himself? For example, a drunk that is trying to sleep on railroad tracks. Are we initiating force when we remove him, even if he protests?

This is a problem that paramedics and other EMS workers have to face every day. I will give an example: A man that has been drinking is driving his motorcycle without a helmet. He lays it down, and slides under the back wheels of an automobile. There is a large area of skin missing from his forehead, and a large lump on the top of his head. He is staggering, and there is a large flap of loose flesh hanging torn from his arm. He is adamantly refusing a trip to the hospital. Is it initiating force to make him go? Yes. Is it wrong to force him? No.

You see a person who is drink is not capable of deciding for himself if he needs medical care. A person who has a head injury can be combative and adamant that he doesn't want anyone touching him. In those cases, should we leave him there to die? If we do, the law says that his family can sue me.

In such a case, I would have no problem leaving a person there, if that is what the law requires. However, the law must also not hold the medical provider liable when the decision turns out to be a fatal one for the patient.

That is one of the basic flaws with that philosphy.

Crime doesn't happen at college

This is a bulletin from Valencia College in Orlando:


At approximately 9:20pm on Wednesday, January 23, 2013, two female students were approached from behind by a black male wearing jeans and hooded sweatshirt as they walked together to their car.  The suspect called out to them from behind saying “excuse me” a couple of times.  The students continued walking and didn’t acknowledge him. The suspect grabbed one of the students by her wrist,  and she immediately fell faint on the ground.  The second student went to her aid and was hit in the mouth.  We believe the second student was hit in the mouth inadvertently as the first student fell. The suspect walked away with no words or further contact.  There is no clear motive in this incident.
If you witnessed or have any information regarding this case, please contact Campus Security at (407) 582-1000.  Information can also be given anonymously using the “Silent Witness” form on the security web page at http://valenciacollege.edu/security/silentWitness.cfm
Remember these safety tips:
·         Call Campus Security at (407) 582-1000 if you’d like an escort to your car.
·         Travel in the company of others and use the “buddy” system whenever you can.
·         Use your cell phone and campus safety call boxes to call for assistance.
·         If you see any suspicious behavior, report it to Campus Security using the methods outlined above.


In Florida, weapons are prohibited on college campuses. Instead, you must hope that the attacker decides not to hurt you. These women used the "buddy system" and it stopped nothing. Call boxes and cell phones only serve to let you call for help AFTER the attack is over. Welcome to defenseless victim zones, ladies.

Jefferson's law?

I was told today by a gun banning liberal that any time a person mentions the US Constitution, the person doing the mentioning should concede that the argument is over, and they have lost. He claimed that any mention of the Constitution means that the logic of your argument cannot stand up to scrutiny, and one must fall upon an illogical appeal to authority that does not stand up. He claimed that this falls under the same category of using the Bible to support your argument.

I guess this is a variation of Godwin's law.

Informing

I have carried a concealed weapon for 25 years, as a resident of four states. I always thought that it would be prudent to inform officers that I came in contact with that I was carrying a concealed weapon. Until 2001, that is.
That was the year that I was pulled over by an Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Sergeant for running a stop sign. He told me to step out of the car, and I handed him my license, registration, and concealed weapons permit, and told him "Just so you don't get nervous, I want to let you know that I am carrying a concealed weapon." The conversation went like this:

Deputy Sergeant: (puts hand on gun) "You move and I will kill you where you stand. You wanna try me? I bet I'm faster."
DM "I was just letting you know, so that you wouldn't be nervous."
DS "Do I look nervous to you, boy?"
DM "No."
DS "I can't believe that they let dumb assholes like you carry a gun."
DM "What's your problem?"
DS "You are. Please, make one move, so I can have an excuse."

The rest of the conversation was just a productive. He didn't even arrest me or write a ticket. Ever since, I no longer inform them, especially since Florida doesn't have a duty to inform. It isn't worth the risk of running into the wrong cop.

RKBA only applies to muskets

An old gun control meme that we have been hearing for years has been making a serious comeback as of late: The founders only meant the Second Amendment's reference to 'arms' to apply to muskets.This certainly means that people cannot own cannons or nuclear weapons.

There are a lot of reasons why this is a false statement, but I will give you my favorite:
Letters of marque. The issuing of letters of marque are mentioned in the Constitution as one of the enumerated powers of Congress. You see, piracy was a crime punishable by death, and any nation's warship that caught a pirate would hang them on sight. However, it was considered a matter of national policy if a nation were to attack the trading vessels of a nation with which they were engaged in hostilities. So, national governments would issue a letter to the owner or captain of a naval vessel, authorizing him to raid and capture the vessels flying another country's flag. These letters were called "letters of marque."

A letter of marque would be issued, first describing the ship by the number and type of guns on board, and then naming the captain being granted the letter, and then the specific actions that he could perform under this letter. Guns being the naval definition: seagoing cannons. Since it is necessary for a captain to already own his warship before being granted the letter, this is pretty strong evidence that the founders had no trouble with private citizens owning the equivalent to a modern day destroyer.

This is actually how the colonials were able to cut off the supplies coming to the British army. At one point, the privateers were hiring so many sailors to man ships for these letters of marque, that Washington was having trouble finding soldiers for the land army. There are an excellent couple of books on this fascinating bit of Revolutionary War history, and these are the two that I recommend:

George Washington's Secret Navy
Patriot Pirates

Certainly if the founders were to think it wise and prudent for citizens to own warships, they would have no problem with modern day implements like fighter jets, artillery, or any number of other weapons. I would agree that nuclear weapons have little use in private hands, but my position on this is simple: Amend the constitution to say something similar to:
AMENDMENT: Be it resolved that the states and the people declare that the right to 'arms' protected by the Second Amendment do not include the right to keep and bear nuclear or biological weapons. The right and power to keep and bear nuclear and biological weapons is reserved to the states and to the union. Congress and the States have the power to restrict ownership of such weapons by individual citizens, and may pass laws in the furtherance of same.


I'm sure you would have little problem passing and ratifying such an amendment.

Move on

I listen to the conservative talk shows, and they are sitting here complaining about Obamacare. Move on. That fight is over, and it has been lost. The Democrats have all ready moved on, and the longer you sit there, bitching about the last battle, the more battles they are winning by default.

This is odd

According to Google, the page where relief funds are requested by the United Way was created three days before the shooting took place. This is a bit hard to believe. Can anyone with more Internet knowledge than I explain how this is possible?

EDITED TO ADD: Because the web page goes on to talk about all of the 911 truther nonsense, it makes it even less credible in my mind.

Gun control depends on lies

As Kevin points out, there is a disconnect with Bill Nelson's poll. Here is that Kevin saw at 5:14 am this morning:

1745 votes, 23 for gun control, 27 against, and no undecideds. Where did the other 1695 votes go? Apparently in the memory hole. Here are the results from 9:27 in the morning:

2538 votes, with 30 in favor of gun control, and now only 20 in opposition. This is what gun control is: lies and deceit.

No comment required

Agent Provocateur

The gun control proposals, including the proposed executive orders that will be issued by the White House, in my opinion, are not the true endgame. The real goal here is to provoke a few hot headed gun owners into enacting a "Second Amendment remedy." Once this happens, the President will have the excuse he needs to declare martial law. This is the true reason behind this unconstitutional power grab.

To you Republicans: This is where I get to say "I told you so."

Reasoned discourse

Cheaper than dirt received a lot of criticism because they stopped selling firearms in the wake of the Newtown shooting. They also raised PMAG prices from $12 to $60 in an attempt to profiteer on the instant demand.

Many shooters, myself included, vowed to never buy there again. Now they are back pedaling, and claiming that the stoppage in firearms sales was caused by large demand. Funny, that isn't what they said initially. Many comments on the post that are critical of CTD were deleted, and now comments are closed.

Frankly, I hope they go under.

Dumb economist

Suppose that I came up with a plan to eliminate poverty once and for all: Let's give every person in the country $100,000. That would enable everyone to buy whatever they want, right? Except who would go to work the next day at the car lot, the sandwich shop, the grocery store, or anywhere else, knowing that they would only get $10 or less, when they had a shopping spree to take care of?

So after a day or two, the vast majority of people in the country would be out of food, and out of gas. Since no one is at work, there are no goods to be had anywhere at any price. People will be screaming for stuff. It begins with craigslist, a man selling sandwiches for the low price of $500. They sell like crazy to the starving.

He decides to open himself up a sandwich shop. The only problem is that no one is going to work for $10 an hour, so he has to pay his people $1,000 an hour. Sandwiches now cost $750 each.

That is how inflation works, although at a slower pace. In 1962, what $100,000 could buy you today could be had for just over $13,000. In 1912, that same hundred grand worth of products would have cost a mere $4,350. As the government continues to put more money into circulation, it takes more and more money to entice people to continue working. We call that inflation. As the government continues to print and borrow money in order to give it to others, it causes more and more inflation.

This is why this so-called economist is an idiot. His plan is for Obama to mint a one trillion dollar coin, and use it to buy debt from the fed. In essence, print the money out of thin air. He claims that this will do no economic harm. Well, of that is true, lets go ahead and mint up 30 of those coins, pay off the entire debt, and then cut every American a check for $50,000. Dumbass. Paul Krugman needs to contact the college he graduated from and demand his money back.

Flashlight

Flashlight that takes whatever you give it, that will run on almost any battery you've got on hand.. AAA, AA, C, or D-sized batteries can all be accommodated at the same time.

The numbers

This is a follow up to the post last month on the effect of urbanization on crime rates and why it is not an even comparison between the US and Canada.All of the data following comes from the FBI Uniform Crime in the United States report for 2011.

There were a total of 14,022 deaths declared to be "murder or nonnegligent manslaughter." To make things simple for me to type, and to make this post more readable, I will refer to this category of death as "homicides" for the rest of this post.

In the United States, there are just shy of 88 million people who live in cities with a population of 100,000 or more people. (Population groups I and II) This represents 28.15% of the total population of the country.

If we combine groups I and II, we see that there were 7,424 homicides in this population group. This resulted in a homicide rate of 8.46 per 100,000. For the remaining 224 million people in the country, the homicide rate is 2.94 per 100,000. In other words, 28 percent of the country is responsible for 53 percent of the homicides.

I downloaded the data to a spreadsheet, and did a little more arithmetic.

Cities that have a population of 1 million or more, with a total population of 25.2 million, were the site of 2,223 homicides. That means that the 8 percent of Americans who live in cities of over one million are responsible for 15.8 percent of the murders.

So let's reduce that to the Canada versus US discussion. For the purposes of this, we will exclude the Americans who live in cities of over 500,000. There are approximately 269 million people in the US that are not living in cities of over 500,000 people. In those areas, there were 10,043 homicides, leaving a rate of 3.73 per 100,000.

Canada reports a homicide rate of 1.6 per 100,000. However, Canada only includes first and second degree murder, manslaughter, and infanticide in their statistics as "homicides," furthermore, Canada requires that a person must be CHARGED with the crime in order for the death to be reported as a homicide. The United States, on the other hand, includes all intentional killings of one human by another (except deaths caused by negligence, suicide, or accident; and justifiable homicides), and no arrest must be made. This means that unsolved murders do not count towards Canada's statistics. For this reason, a direct comparison between the statistics of the two nations is not valid.

Even so, the disparity between the murder rates of the two nations is much narrower than the anti gunners would have us believe.

The Coming Year

My prediction for the year of 2013:
The Democrats will propose a plethora of gun control bills. That is a no brainer, but here is where I go out on a limb: The Republicans will pick one, and they will go along with it. We will get a new ban on some sort of firearms. The reason is that the Republicans are first and foremost wanting to get reelected. A constituency that is energized and ticked off will be likely to repeat the sweep that happened after the 1994 ban was passed. You must understand that this is politics, and the one thing that ALL of congress wants is to keep their money, power, and prestige. They want it more than they believe in any quaint idea like duty, honor, or country, words that have become a joke in today's language.

My next prediction is that the gun owners, for the most part, will do nothing about it. Sure, they like to bitch and complain on the internet, but you can't seriously expect a group of people who can't even be bothered to show up for a rally or to write a letter to their congressional representatives to actually join any kind of armed resistance.

Elections have consequences. This election was doomed to fail from the start: we had to choose between a gun-grabbing racist socialist and a gun-grabbing rich socialist. There was no chance from the start.

In the end, this is all just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: We are currently $16 trillion in debt, with another $144 trillion in unfunded liabilities. There are $trillion + budget deficits as far as the eye can see. This is the beginning of the end, and there is no avoiding it now. The problem is that large, powerful governments do not go gently into the good night. The questions that I have are:

- How long will it take?
- How much will the American public take? Will we reach a breaking point of the people before we wind up in a police state? In the meantime, how much power will the large, powerful government take for itself before the end finally comes?

We live in interesting times, and things are going to get A LOT worse before they get better, if they ever do get better.