| Interesting that you know the probability of -any- warning shot, fired in -any- direction, at -any- time... Bullets fired into the air have regularly caused deaths and injuries around the world. [1] In several US states firing a bullet into the air is a crime, in some, a felony. [1, below] I find it difficult to believe that any person is well trained enough to take all critical factors into account during an armed encounter to determine whether or not a bullet will ricochet off a non-target surface, and in what direction it will ricochet. [2] "So, 50 years or so of warning shots and no one was hurt. If a warning shot kills someone today, those 50 years of warning shots only had to save two lives (someone decides to give up instead of seeking confrontation and being killed) to be worth it. I think it's pretty simple, actually. On the whole, warning shots seem quite beneficial, that more than outweighs the low probability of hurting or killing someone." I find this a starkly terrible calculus. Are you really saying that cops can kill one innocent person for every two potential deaths they may or may not have prevented? "But humans are bad at dealing with probability, so your error is understandable." Consider this statement in light of actual statistics. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire#Falling-bul... (Numerous citations) [2] http://books.google.com/books?id=VbrDbbHAflsC&pg=PA109&#... EDIT: In the essence of improving one's self, what about this rebuttal causes so many downvotes? |
Firing shots at people is also illegal in most situations pretty much anywhere. The police gets an exemption from that blanket rule under very specific conditions. I’m consequently not sure of what the fact that firing shots in the air is illegal is supposed to convince me.
I don’t think people or the police should be allowed to fire in the air for no reason at all. That’s obviously stupid. That does certainly not mean that firing in the air can never be a great idea under very specific conditions.
I do not deny that bullets fired in the air are dangerous – but the probability of them actually being dangerous is extremely low. That’s the whole point.
I'm also not sure what that dig about probability is supposed to me. I think that probability is easy enough to roughly estimate and that any estimate leads to extremely low numbers. Estimate the area of humans exposed to the sky that would also lead to death if hit, compare it to the area of ground. For that second one you can use some densely populated area to get an upper bound.
That celebratory gunfire is common in some countries and that it – despite hundreds of shots being fired in the air – leads to only very few deaths should already tell you something about the low probability. (Celebratory gunfire is obviously stupid, though. There is no good reason to do it, nothing that could outweigh the probability of hurting or killing someone.)