Responsible gun owners.

[Heid the Ba]

Shoot someone then plead not guilty.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68838017

[wring]

wow. a uniquely American story, I think.

I have NEVER heard of anyone claiming to be other than "a responsible gun owner". this includes the nimrod I read about once who kept their gun, loaded, in the oven. Yeah, like that will never be a problem. This also includes a personal friend of mine who has some how 'lost' at least one gun, though he owns a gun safe. This also included my father, who left his gun to my brother. Brother reported that as far as he can tell, dad never cleaned said gun despite owning it for some 40+ years. Dad also pointed said gun at a salesman he'd invited to his home after deciding that he didn't want the product after all. We used to joke when flying to his place (the airport was near his home) that we hoped dad wasn't outside aiming his gun at our plane "don't shoot dad, it's us!".

[wring]

and the board was wonky so it took several hours to post that...

[Richard A]

It does seem to be. There is a wonderful takedown of "responsible gun owners" by Australian comedian Jim Jefferies here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0.

Jefferies comments that Australia took the world record for the worst gun massacre and responded with some very tough gun controls. He then says, "Since then, we haven't had any more gun massacres. I don't know how or why that happened." Consider what the body count would have been if those carrying out two recent Sydney attacks had had M16s rather than knives.

Interestingly, while I was looking at something else, I came across a statistic for Cleveland Police - not the one in Ohio but the one in the north-east of England. It's responsible for policing a population of a bit under 570,000, so about 1.5 times that of the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Since 1893, the English Cleveland Police has lost one officer in the line of duty. The Ohio force's count begins 40 years earlier, but I'm not sure that's enough to explain it being 108, of whom 75 were shot.

[Heid the Ba]

A large percentage of those shot would be suicides. It is so rare for UK officers to be shot that those of us here will remember most of the incidents. As a comparator Police Scotland have shot and killed one person in twenty years, and that person had stabbed several people and was attacking an officer. That is while policing a population of 5.5 - 6 million.