But I keep getting told that an armed populace is a polite populace. So I can only assume that the police are really polite when they shoot people.
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Itâs true, the population of Iceland is closer to that of St. Louis. But thatâs still not fair, because thatâs a city compared to a whole country. Icelandâs biggest city is on par with, say Athens, Georgia (an officer-involved shooting every few years, at least), or Berkeley California (the police there shoot more people just on the university campus than the police in the entire country of Iceland do). Ferguson Missouri, on the other hand, would only be somewhere between their third and fourth-largest towns in terms of populationâŠ
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There is no way Iceland, or even Sweden, could be more Scandinavian than Minneapolis!!
(I kid, I kidâŠbut seriouslyâŠ)
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No one in this thread has argued otherwise, especially because of Iceland.
Consider this from a researcherâs point of view. You want to better understand the militarization of police forces in America and the upward trend in less competent and more brutal policing. To this end, you must take account of Americaâs heterogenous cultural attitudes towards authority, the extremely heterogenous application of its criminal justice systems, race relations, drug laws, criminal social networks, firearms distribution, the commercial interests of weapons manufacturers, etc.
The Iceland-USA comparison is useless because there are too many confounding variables to construe any practical (read: applicable) conclusions. We would be better off research policing in countries (or cities) whose comparison presents as few confounds as possible.
Thatâs not to say we still canât learn anything from Iceland. As you say, theyâve demonstrated that human society, at least at some scale, can police themselves just fine without killing its citizens. In a world where so few things meet our ideals, thatâs pretty remarkable. Whether or not the conclusions from the case study of Iceland prove scalable, theyâre a tremendous source of encouragement that we, as a species, can do betterâ and knowing that, we know we must strive to do better.
Presumably a terrorists job is murder and mayhem while the police have the job of protecting people. Yet the police rack up a higher body count.
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This thread is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. Never change, BoingBoing, never change.
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One key difference is the nature of their roles. There is nothing about being a religious adherent that gives you a special role in such things. Cops are paid to enforce the law. At best they are choosing not to do their jobs when they donât speak out against their corrupt colleagues. Another issue is that there are very few people actively supporting and raising money for terrorists who commit bad acts. There are plenty of cops doing exactly that.
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I just love these threads. I tend to agree with the majority view, but believe the minority view is also important for discussion and clarification.
minority opinion add: I think one valid concern that a minority opinion can have here is that, simply, ânot ALL cops are badâ. But, this does not need to be said. It would imply arguing about the very serious problems in the US with law enforcement should not be made.
majority opinion add: This sort of exposure is picking up, as transparency is really beginning to be applied to those who expect the individual be entirely transparent. That is, inevitably, transparency will come to all. They may think this wonât happen to them, but it surely will.
If the governing authorities are demanding their organizations have complete transparency over everyone all the time, the same rule will be applied to them, sooner or later. We already see this wave starting to pick up momentum.
It is just inevitable at this stage of the Information Age.
We all know what we are looking at when we see these disclosures, such as the video this last week of the cop shooting (contrasted against the initial police report and public announcement), when we see individuals like Snowden and their revelations, when we see movements like the âInnocent Projectâ picking up steam⊠we are looking at very tiny tips of an emerging monster just beginning to come out of the sea. 
Interesting times to come.
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Itâs not impossible that some of the victims were prison escapees.
Theyâre not really terrorists until they succeed, are they? Until then theyâre just conspirators, or terrorist manquĂ©s if they fail.
cries for you
Iâm sure some Fox News comment thread has what youâre looking for.
There have been no recorded human deaths from meteor falls. At some point someone must have used a meteorite to bash someone elseâs head in, but thatâs probably not what you were talking about.
Yeah, this was one of those threads where you could hear the axes grinding halfway through reading the first comment.
Actually, thanks for the opportunity to correct myself!
And for the opportunity to correct you: the term I should have used is meteoroid.
A meteoroid can only kill astronauts. Once itâs in the atmosphere itâs a meteor, and when it hits the ground itâs a meteorite.
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That may change in the future.
As of November 2014, there are at least 10 U.S. volunteers who have fought alongside the YPG.
However the YPG are anarchist/communist influenced, so the right wingers wonât care if they die.
You make an interesting assumption about me, based on my comment (which supported neither side of the argument). For the record, your assumption is wrong, but still interesting.
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