<story><title>Investigation: Police Shootings</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cryptoz</author><text>About 30,000 Americans die in car crashes every year. That&amp;#x27;s about ~400,000 Americans killed by other Americans in their cars since the 2001 terrorist attacks. It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the emotional appeal is what people seem to care about (&amp;quot;someone wants to kill us&amp;quot;) and it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying.&lt;p&gt;Terrorism has never been a problem. The same number of people died in car accidents during September 2001 as they did in terrorist attacks. Where is our war on cars? Oh, nobody cares about that, cars are &lt;i&gt;freedom&lt;/i&gt;, cars are what we went to war to protect.</text></item><item><author>adam12</author><text>For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.</text></item><item><author>RealGeek</author><text>93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown.&lt;p&gt;That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Some notes:&lt;p&gt;* The Guardian has a very similar feature, &amp;quot;The Counted&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;us-news&amp;#x2F;ng-interactive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;the-counted-police-killings-us-database&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;us-news&amp;#x2F;ng-interactive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;0...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian&amp;#x27;s feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven&amp;#x27;t involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how dangerous tasers are.&lt;p&gt;The Guardian also gives the state breakdowns weighted by their population, making it easier to spot problem states. But WaPo makes it much easier to see which states have more shootings of unarmed people.&lt;p&gt;* 79% of the people killed in this database were reported to have &amp;quot;deadly weapons&amp;quot; (not including cars).&lt;p&gt;* 64% of the people killed in this database were shot and killed while attacking someone with a deadly weapon.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d really like to have a more detailed breakdown on &amp;quot;deadly weapon&amp;quot;; specifically, you want to know which of the people shot had &lt;i&gt;firearms&lt;/i&gt;, versus knives.&lt;p&gt;Nobody was fatally shot by a police officer in Rhode Island? That&amp;#x27;s surprising.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>What you call emotion, I call justice, and I think that matters.&lt;p&gt;Consider, without any emotion, the issue of murder versus suicide. What are the negative impacts of those acts? From the point of view of that person&amp;#x27;s friends and family and society at large, leaving aside emotion or notions of justice, the impact of the acts is the same: loss of that person, loss of their financial and emotional support. In fact, the impact on family and friends is often worse in cases of suicide because insurance policies often have an exemption for suicide.&lt;p&gt;Yet, almost nobody thinks murder should be legal while quite a few people think suicide should be legal. If we just mechanically consider &amp;quot;a death is a death&amp;quot; and count up the monetary impact of each case, we have no way to explain or justify why people feel this way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Investigation: Police Shootings</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cryptoz</author><text>About 30,000 Americans die in car crashes every year. That&amp;#x27;s about ~400,000 Americans killed by other Americans in their cars since the 2001 terrorist attacks. It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the emotional appeal is what people seem to care about (&amp;quot;someone wants to kill us&amp;quot;) and it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying.&lt;p&gt;Terrorism has never been a problem. The same number of people died in car accidents during September 2001 as they did in terrorist attacks. Where is our war on cars? Oh, nobody cares about that, cars are &lt;i&gt;freedom&lt;/i&gt;, cars are what we went to war to protect.</text></item><item><author>adam12</author><text>For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.</text></item><item><author>RealGeek</author><text>93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown.&lt;p&gt;That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Some notes:&lt;p&gt;* The Guardian has a very similar feature, &amp;quot;The Counted&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;us-news&amp;#x2F;ng-interactive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;the-counted-police-killings-us-database&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;us-news&amp;#x2F;ng-interactive&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;0...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian&amp;#x27;s feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven&amp;#x27;t involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how dangerous tasers are.&lt;p&gt;The Guardian also gives the state breakdowns weighted by their population, making it easier to spot problem states. But WaPo makes it much easier to see which states have more shootings of unarmed people.&lt;p&gt;* 79% of the people killed in this database were reported to have &amp;quot;deadly weapons&amp;quot; (not including cars).&lt;p&gt;* 64% of the people killed in this database were shot and killed while attacking someone with a deadly weapon.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d really like to have a more detailed breakdown on &amp;quot;deadly weapon&amp;quot;; specifically, you want to know which of the people shot had &lt;i&gt;firearms&lt;/i&gt;, versus knives.&lt;p&gt;Nobody was fatally shot by a police officer in Rhode Island? That&amp;#x27;s surprising.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>harryh</author><text>&amp;gt; Where is our war on cars?&lt;p&gt;We do have a war on car fatalities. It&amp;#x27;s been remarkably successful:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.donerdesigns.org&amp;#x2F;_&amp;#x2F;rsrc&amp;#x2F;1376697199749&amp;#x2F;other-causes&amp;#x2F;110404-fatality-rate-per-100-million-vehicle-miles-traveled.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.donerdesigns.org&amp;#x2F;_&amp;#x2F;rsrc&amp;#x2F;1376697199749&amp;#x2F;other-cause...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>