Police shootings data reveal surprising result + IA graphic of gun deaths in America

[C C]

Analysis of Washington Post police-shootings data reveals surprising result
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/18/a...ng-result/

EXCERPT: I got to thinking about the issues of race regarding the recent tragic police shootings, both the shootings of police and the shootings by police. The best data is from the Washington Post, which has a detailed site listing all of the people killed by police, which begins in 2015 and goes to the present. I thought I’d analyze their data. I looked at the data for the year 2015 because the full 2016 data is not in yet, and also in order to be able to compare it to other annual datasets.

First, there were 990 fatal police shootings in 2015. How does this compare to other causes of death? Well, I can’t tell you because so few people are killed by police. The number is so small that it is outside the range of the usual mortality lists. I can say that death by police is not in the top fifty causes of death in the US, so it is relatively rare. It is extremely rare for women, because the overwhelming majority of those killed by police were men. And I would be greatly remiss if I did not highlight that in addition to the 990 civilian deaths, there were 51 police deaths in 2015.

Regarding the civilians killed by police, more than nine-tenths of them were armed at the time—58% of the people killed had a gun or explosives, 17% wielded a knife or edged weapon, 9% were unarmed, 6% used a vehicle, and tragically, 3% had a toy weapon. The rest used mostly clubs, hatchets, hammers, baseball bats, the usual assortment of your basic stone age deadly weapons that can kill you just as dead now as they could in 1500 BC....

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Gun Deaths In America
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/

EXCERPT: This interactive graphic is part of our project exploring the more than 33,000 annual gun deaths in America and what it would take to bring that number down. See our stories on suicides among middle-age men, homicides of young black men and accidental deaths, or explore the menu for more coverage. The data in this interactive graphic comes primarily from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Multiple Cause of Death database, which is derived from death certificates from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and is widely considered the most comprehensive estimate of firearm deaths. In keeping with the CDC’s practice, deaths of non-U.S. residents that take place in the U.S. (about 50 per year) are excluded. All figures are averages from the years 2012 to 2014, except for police shootings of civilians, which are from 2014....

[Ben the Donkey]

I don't like counting suicide data in the gun debate. Well, that isn't strictly true, but I do assign it less importance. 

That the majority of gun deaths (worldwide, not just in the USA) are suicides is the type of thing lobbyists use for shock value.
If someone wants to kill themselves, let them. It's not as if we have a population problem or anything. I honestly feel that suicide data in general is good for determining the failings of society. I'd love to see a "suicide booth" ala Futurama, that data would get attention pretty damned fast.  

And yes, I have been very, very close to it myself, and in fact there has been one period in my life where if I'd had access to a gun, it might have happened. There are those of us who do empathize with Mishima on this one.

I actually have quite a lot to say on this subject, but I'll hold my cards close for now I think. I'll leave you with a quote from one of his novels:

"How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at the age of thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a fragile barrier separates him from his youth. He is forever hearing with the utmost clarity the sounds of this neighboring domain, but there is no way to penetrate the barrier."

Yukio Mishima  - Runaway Horses

[Secular Sanity]

There are those of us who do empathize with Mishima on this one.

I actually have quite a lot to say on this subject, but I'll hold my cards close for now I think. I'll leave you with a quote from one of his novels:

"How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at the age of thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a fragile barrier separates him from his youth. He is forever hearing with the utmost clarity the sounds of this neighboring domain, but there is no way to penetrate the barrier."

Yukio Mishima  - Runaway Horses

I was watching a few math lectures from Edward Frenkel.  He created a short film "Rites of Love and Math" to pay homage to the film "The Rite of Love and Death" by Yukio Mishima.  Okay, I’ll admit that it was his butt that first caught my attention, but then I started reading a little on Yukio Mishima.  I knew about seppuku, but I had never heard of kaishakunin.  Damn!

In his "Rite of Love and Death" (Patriotism), concern for one's country, he’s still playing with the idea of another world. "We’ll go together to another world," but years later in "Runaway Horses" nihilism emerges.

His death poem wasn’t really what you’d expect from such a good writer, though.  I thought that Uesugi Kenshin’s was much better.

Yukio Mishima’s Death Poem
A small night storm blows
Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
Preceding those who hesitate
—Yukio Mishima

Uesugi Kenshin’s Death Poem
1530-1578
Even a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake;
A life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream;
I know not what life is, nor death.
Year in year out-all but a dream.
Both Heaven and Hell are left behind;
I stand in the moonlit dawn,
Free from clouds of attachment.

Nihilism; it's a strange backdrop, isn't it?