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hedgetank t1_j9c225x wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Union City neighbor shoots man he witnessed stabbing woman by B1Baker

It's difficult to track because unless shots are fired or something actually happens, the police aren't called. If the police are called, it's after the event and the report won't really reflect much.

So, the only way to track these kinds of incidents is either going to be self-reporting, or some means of requiring a police report and requiring the report to reflect that the victim drew a firearm in preparation for self defense, but didn't require firing it.

You can imagine just how difficult it would be to get cops to do all that paperwork, considering how loathe they are to do it already.

This means that people who don't want to believe that it's even possible for whatever reason can blow off the statistic, because, like a lot of other things, if it's not reported, it obviously didn't happen, right?

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[deleted] t1_j9cq5mc wrote

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hedgetank t1_j9czdh0 wrote

I mean that if someone threatened me with a weapon for whatever reason, I drew my firearm in preparation to defend myself because I had no other choice, she the attacker decided to cut and run instead of risking it, why would I call the cops and invite all the hassle that dealing with American cops brings?

There's no suspect, there's little evidence, no shots fired, presumably no harm to me, and my choices are to call 911, try to convince them that something happened and to send cops, spend hours going over details, and end up nowhere; or I could simply collect my wits and get the hell out of there.

Hell, after I was attacked and nearly killed, the cops and the DA both said to me face that since there were no witnesses, and the area was rough, there was basically fuck-all they could do and zero chance they'd ever find the guy, and my home town is relatively small.

Studies and data from the FBI generally show, too, that many encounters of various kinds like I described above go unreported because people don't want to deal with the cops. More so if they're a minority.

So tell me again, how do you propose to track incidents where someone draws a gun in self defense, but things never get to a point where shots are fired and police aren't involved?

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