So, Being Armed Makes it OK for Police to Shoot You?

It’s always fascinating to listen to police apologists rationalize the shooting of civilians — especially Black folks — by law enforcement.

The lengths to which they’ll go to make police-involved shootings justifiable are seemingly endless.

When it comes to racial disparities in such shootings, they’ll note disproportionate crime rates in Black communities, as if aggregate data can justify a given shooting, regardless of the actual encounter in question and what the decedent was doing before being shot.

Because Black folks commit homicide six times more frequently than whites, per capita — and violent crime generally 2.5 times more often — they’ll say police killing Black folks 2.5 times more often than whites, per capita, only makes sense (1).

In fact, they’ll say, compared to the homicide rate disparities, they may not be shooting Black people enough!

Seriously, I’ve heard that said more times than I can remember.

But the argument is silly.

Crime rate data can’t justify racially disparate shootings by cops

Unless the person shot by police is in the middle of committing one of those homicides referenced in the annual data, or another violent crime, the data itself is, or should be, irrelevant.

The only way to even theoretically use racial crime rate disparities to justify racial disparities in police shootings is to assume that the two pools of Black people — those shot by cops and those who commit those disproportionate crimes that show up in the data — are the same, or interchangeable.

And yet, this cannot logically be assumed. I have discussed why, previously, in several other essays, including this one, from 2018.

What matters in a given encounter — and then the aggregate produced by those encounters — is what those killed by cops were actually doing when they were shot.

If those persons shot are indeed attacking the officer or another party in a way that threatens death or serious bodily harm, most would agree that shooting them can be justified, however tragic. But what about cases where no such attack is underway?

Turns out, these represent a large share of police-involved shootings. So how can those shootings be justified?

The fact that many shot by police were armed is an odd argument for the right to make…

Of course, the apologists have an answer. It’s one they rapidly deploy, especially when the person shot by the officer is Black or brown, but even, on occasion, when the decedent is white.

When this issue is raised, those who rush to defend police will pivot to the suggestion that most persons shot by cops were engaged in nefarious activity. And this they know because, according to the available data, most were armed with some weapon, most often a gun.

The implication is that if a person is armed, they obviously pose a threat, and thus, it should be considered lawful and morally sound to shoot that person, even if we know nothing else about the encounter.

But is this true?

If so, it’s odd to hear it from the same people who are generally quick to defend the right of all Americans to possess and carry weapons at virtually all times. If being armed gives police a valid reason to shoot and possibly kill you, how valuable is the Second Amendment? And how sacrosanct can we assume it to be?

And this is the point — the people who fetishize concealed or open carry aren’t thinking about the kinds of people police shoot when they talk about the right to bear arms.

…or maybe it’s not when you realize who they think the right to bear arms applies to

They don’t mean Black people. And they don’t mean poor people of any race.

They mean them. Nice, morally upright, white suburban Christians who arm up to protect against the kind of ne’er-do-wells the police are thought to be shooting. The right to bear arms, for most white people, is a right to be possessed by them, more or less exclusively.

This is why the NRA and other gun fanatics remained silent when Philando Castile, a lawful gun owner, was shot dead by an officer in Minnesota.

Sure, he told the officer he had a weapon on him — not something you typically say to a cop if you intend to proceed to murder him by the side of the road — and yes, he had a permit. But when he was killed, those who demand the right to bear arms as a hedge against state tyranny said nothing.

The fact of being armed doesn’t make one a legitimate target

However, putting aside one’s Constitutional rights, it should be evident that merely having a weapon on you, whether a gun or something else, does not give an officer a right to shoot you. Weapons possession, even a firearm possessed by someone who has a felony record and is perhaps legally barred from owning one, is not a crime for which the death penalty is applied.

And if the weapon is only discovered afterward, in a pocket, waistband, or under a car seat, but wasn’t brandished — as with Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge — how can it be used to rationalize the shooting?

I addressed several dubious cases where “armed” suspects were killed in a previous piece, which you can read here if interested.

But in addition to cases noted in that previous piece, I can now point to some additional data demonstrating the problem with justifying police shootings based on decedents having been armed.

Recent data shows how unjustified many shootings are, including those of “armed” suspects

According to the most comprehensive tracking of police-involved killings, Mapping Police Violence, there were 1,134 persons killed by police in 2021, nearly all of whom were killed by firearms.

In roughly half of all cases, police were not responding to a violent crime report or any crime at all. In about 1 of 11 cases, police were responding to a mental health emergency — something for which they arguably shouldn’t be relied upon, and certainly not as the first line of response.

Although there were only 78 persons killed by police who were officially “unarmed” (and another 113 “undetermined”), only 58 percent of those killed were armed with a gun.

Fifty-five cases involved persons killed while “armed” with a vehicle.

Forty-nine of these were shot while the vehicle was moving, which is a tactic found to be ineffective and dangerous to third parties who can be harmed by stray bullets or by those vehicles if the driver loses control after being shot. Arguably, such shootings should be banned and surely not rationalized as a legitimate tactic.

Of those shot, 161 were armed with a knife.

But other countries manage to disarm knife-wielding suspects without shooting them. In the U.K., the rate of knife attacks against police is comparable to that in the U.S., but only two people were shot and killed by police in the entire U.K. in 2021 — compared to 8 such shootings of knife-wielders by police that year in Los Angeles alone.

Another 71 were armed with some “other” object, which typically means a baseball bat, stick, rock, brick, or other items not likely to pose a mortal threat to an officer such that a shooting should be presumed valid.

And of those armed with guns, 1 in 8 were not alleged to have been attacking or threatening to attack anyone.

Even if the other cases were all justifiable shootings, it is reasonable to question at least 369 of the “armed” shootings (cars, knives, other objects, and guns but not attacking), which amounts to nearly 40 percent of all shootings of armed persons.

Combined with the 78 unarmed persons killed, and even if we assume every shooting where it was unclear if the decedent was armed was valid, this would mean nearly 450 inherently questionable shootings that could have been avoided.

That there are at least this many unjustifiable shootings annually — far more than any other nation, including nations with comparable crime rates (of which there are several) — speaks to the sickness of American law enforcement.

This “shoot first, cover your ass later” mentality is not only disproportionately resulting in the killing of Black and brown folks, though it is surely doing that. It also results in such disproportionate displays of force as were evident in Nashville last week, where more than a dozen officers surrounded a young mentally disturbed white man on an interstate and gunned him down.

Though he posed no threat to anyone when first approached, the onslaught of officers who came to the scene, resulting in the entire interstate being shut down, escalated the decedent’s anxiety and agitation levels. When he pulled a small cylindrical object from his pocket (which was quite obviously too small to have been a gun), he was fired upon dozens of times.

This shooting didn’t have to happen. One suspects that it would not have occurred in almost any other nation on Earth. And in most any other country, few would be seeking to rationalize it if it did.

But this is America, and we do things a little differently here.

First and foremost, defending the indefensible.

. . .

(1) A note about crime rates. These numbers are correct. But please note, this is not because Black people are inherently more prone to crime, or culturally predisposed to the same, or any other racist nonsense. Studies in over 20 countries have found that socially and economically marginalized communities always have these kinds of disparate crime rates.

Crowded housing, dilapidated infrastructure, marginal attachment to stable labor markets, and other structural conditions explain the crime rate disparities. In fact, urbanicity alone accounts for half of the racial disparity (see Zimring, F and and G. Hawkins, Crime is Not the Problem, Oxford University Press: 1999).

Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free

—

This post was previously published on AfroSapiophile.

***

Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.