More weapons

We need more guns. At least in the hands of the right people. Meaning - well, at least somebody. Aftenposten reports it, tells the Police would like to have it and backs it up with an MMI Survey.

When it comes to guns I’m always a bit careful. Guns are only made to kill. Either for hunting or people. We can’t put their invention back into Pandoras Box, so we have to live with it. Personally I try to avoid them as much as possible in daily life. Though shooting is fun, the consequences of a misuse are mostly more or less lethal.

That article linked to above made me stop reading and I wondered:

  1. What survey is it? There’s no link and I having a bit of problems finding it on the Internet. Is it public available?

  2. Why would weapons have made a difference in the referenced 22. Juli 2011? The only point were weapons could have been used were on Utøya (and there they have been used).

I think the mother of the though isn’t here the idea that the police will handle situations better with weapons at their side all the time. Though some situations might be fixed by the simple thread, other situations will rise which end more tragically based on the simple fact that weapons will be involved.

In my opinion it’s more likely that the idea is that more weapons will make it safer for everybody. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of a single example where that actually was true. Surely the work of police is partly dangerous, but on the other hand that’s part of the job as well. It’s easy to say not being in that situation, but nobody was forced to join the police. It’s everybody’s own choice. It’s simply not possible to erase all danger from that job. You have to accept that. If you want to involve weapons you’ll simply but it on a new level.

As a compromise the police currently have weapons in their cars and pick them up if necessary. Much better and it prevents from sudden “accidents”. Also I can’t remember the last article about a policeman getting shot or killed here. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening, it’s just very rare currently.

I’m afraid that when you open this door once and you introduce guns into the daily life, you hardly can go back again. We should think about what we gain and what we loose when making decisions.

From my point of view the risks and consequences outweigh the benefits.

Update:

As if I’ve called for this…: NYPD police shooting wrong people

Update:

Here a small update. It took a bit time, but I got a hand on the document containing the results of the MMI. The Norwegian Politiets Fellesforbund was very helpful with getting the data. I basically had to climb down the whole ladder from the journalists writing the article, to the MMI and finally to the Politiets Fellesforbund.

  • The journalist didn’t have the data, just the result.

  • The MMI wasn’t the owner of the report.

  • Politiets Fellesforbund helped out here and sent me the data.

It’s not much data, but basically all you need.

After reviewing the survey I can say: Yes, 55% is about right. But there’s more behind it if compared to the article.

First off all: the survey included only 1001 people, asked via telephone. In 1.10.2004 there were living 4.589.608 people in Norway. 1001 people are about 0.02% of the population of 2004. If you want to reproduce this result and you again would ask 1001 via telephone, depending on who you call and where they live and what people they are you might get completely different results.

The article states that many people support the idea of the police going around armed:

Politiets Fellsforbund utreder om norsk politi bør gå med våpen. – Jeg har absolutt sett og registrert at flere, spesielt i Oslo, har vært for generell bevæpning, sier Arne Johannessen, leder i Politiets Fellesforbund.

—Jørgen Svarstad

I can’t find any hint in the data where the people live that has been asked. I therefore have to assume they were spread all over Norway. But if we follow the suggestive claim that only the people in Oslo have been asked about their opinion in this matter, than the database becomes a new one. Suddenly there’s only the population of Oslo in favour for this. To claim that 55% of Norway are in favour for police going around armed becomes quite unstable, if we calculate differently. I don’t know why people living outside of Oslo should have an opinion about if the police should go around in Oslo with weapons or not. Of course they are entitled to have an opinion if they really want to.

But calculating these claimed 55% (~550 people) in perspective to the rest of Norway, the number 55 is decreasing significantly downwards. I’ve done the math for both, 2004 (when the survey was done) and 2012 (the article came out in August 2011).

2004

  • 4.589.608 in Norway 1.10.2004.

  • 524.888 in Oslo/Akershus, 1.10.2004.

  • The statistical number of people in Oslo in favour for the police being armed is 288688.40 (524.888/100*55).

  • That’s about 6.29% of the Norwegian population (288688.40/(4589608/100%)).

2012

Statistical Magic

Since a picture tells more than a thousand words I glued the data in the graph on the right. The first cylinder is the number of people in Norway in 2004 in total. The non-existing one in the middle is the number of people they’ve asked and the cylinder on the right are the people they claim are backing up the whole story. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I find the statistical extrapolation from the middle to right a bit ambiguous.

In my opinion (and opinions are what statistics are always about) this is a very small number of people supporting the idea. Not mentioning the statistical base of the survey.

The reason why I’m so picky about this is simple: I don’t like to have a police around that is constantly armed. If necessary there’s no arguing about it, but as a prevention for being ready or “just in case”, that’s the wrong attitude.

I can understand that the men and women working there would maybe like to feel more safe, but this would be only the feeling of being safe and not really increasing their safety. Quite the opposite. That’s why countries with armed police forces might a have higher fatality rates than Norway does. And if want a job without the risk of being hurt, you shouldn’t become a policeman anyway. That’s one aspect they are payed and hired for and they deserve much, much respect for doing this job. But they don’t need to be trusted blindly, they’re after all humans as well. And weapons only have one purpose when used…