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If it seems like every week, there's another terrorist attack – well, you're not wrong. According to one crowdsourcing map, there have been over 500 attacks around the world since the start of 2017, with over 3,500 fatalities. For a period in 2016, ISIS-initiated attacks were occurring, on average, every 84 hours.
Despite improvements in methods and coordination among law enforcement agencies over the past 25 years, they're still hamstrung in a number of ways. With large public gatherings of people becoming more attractive targets for terrorists, what are the best strategies moving forward?
[...] But despite huge budgets and the presence of thousands of added security personnel, it's virtually impossible to prevent a determined terrorist, or guarantee absolute safety. While security efforts for events like the Olympic Games have escalated, terrorists today no longer wait for major events that draw global interest.
[...] The odds are in favor of terrorists. All they have to do is succeed once, no matter how many times they try. For public safety professionals to be fully successful, they have to prevent 100 percent of the terror attempts. It's a number to aspire to, but even the most experienced countries fighting terror – such as Israel and the U.K. – can't measure up to this standard.
[...] These days, it's necessary to consider any place where crowds congregate as vulnerable "soft targets" for the attackers. To better prepare for securing soft targets (and this isn't to say threats against "hard targets," like planes, buildings and infrastructure, have diminished) law enforcement agencies must improve coordination among one another, whether it's via intelligence, information sharing and training. And then there's the need for deconfliction, which refers to avoiding self-defeating behavior – from interagency rivalries and poor communication to insufficient coordination – by people who are on the same side.
[...] Given that there is no way to guarantee complete safety, and that the threat assessment expects more attacks, there are two more elements that ought to receive more attention: community resilience and community policing.
https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-better-protect-crowds-from-terrorism-78443
[Related]:
1996 Atlanta Olympic Games: https://www.britannica.com/event/Atlanta-Olympic-Games-bombing-of-1996
Secure Airport Design: https://skift.com/2016/07/04/how-smart-airport-design-can-make-spaces-more-secure/
Do you agree with this assessment of the security situation ? What do you think could be done to mitigate the effects of such asymmetric warfare ?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:10PM (41 children)
Switzerland has one of the laxest gun ownership laws in the world and gun ownership there is extremely high [smallarmssurvey.org] yet, they have one of the lowest homicide rates [unodc.org] in the world.
This is indisputable evidence that gun ownership does not correlate to increased gun violence. One of reality's well-known liberal biases I guess.
And yet we have college educated western second generation immigrants running off to join ISIS. Education certainly didn't help them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @11:50PM (2 children)
That's definitely not indisputable evidence, that's an outlier. Switzerland is very different from most other countries, for example, they vote on basically everything including whether or not a person should receive citizenship and they have a culture that has peace as deeply embedded as violence is in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:44AM (1 child)
So a clear-cut example in which gun ownership does not lead to gun violence is not indisputable evidence evidence that gun ownership does not lead to gun violence?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:01AM
It's an outlier. As with any complex issue, you can't take what happens in one culture and assume it applies to others.
They also have much lower rates of both violence and suicide in general than the US.
Bottom line is that the more guns you've got the more likely it it's that the violent elements will have and use them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday June 05 2017, @12:29AM (24 children)
So, one country proves what? Is the US the outlier? Rwanda, South Africa, Syria all have guns galore, and, oh, yes, lots of deaths.
Switzerland shows how far the US has to go to qualify as "civilized"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Touché) by oakgrove on Monday June 05 2017, @01:06AM (9 children)
Subtract the gun violence perpetrated by non-whites and the US is one of the safest countries in the world. Ahead of many European countries including places like Finland.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday June 05 2017, @03:18AM (1 child)
So, those bullets, fired by those "non-whites": do they only kill "non-whites", or are "whites" just as dead, after being shot?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:45PM
Take a look at the weekly crime statistics for Chicago, the majority of the violent deaths as black-on-black.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 05 2017, @06:30AM (5 children)
Is there any source on that? sounds interesting.
(Score: 1) by oakgrove on Monday June 05 2017, @09:15AM (4 children)
It's tough to find all the numbers since the doj has a habit of lumping Hispanics in as white but according to this [fbi.gov], in 2013 non-hispanic and whites of a non-determinant ethnicity (which actually overinflates the real number) committed 2,473 murders with a population (in 2012) of 197,243,423 [wikipedia.org] for a rate of about 1.25 per 100,000. According to this [wikipedia.org], the 2013 murder rate in Findland was 1.66 per 100,000.
Hopefully I got all the numbers right as I'm tablet posting in bed.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 05 2017, @11:20AM (3 children)
Those numbers speaks volumes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:56PM (2 children)
I know, right?
That works out to 99.998% of whites who are not murderers. That's pretty good, right?
Ooops, my bad, its actually 99.998% of non-whites.
For whites it is 99.999%.
HUGE difference, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:44PM (1 child)
You are a fucking idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:37PM
Do you feel better now?
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday June 05 2017, @09:01AM
Where did you get that from?
1. subtract the crimes perpetrated by a third of the population in a European country, and suddenly that country is one of the safest in the world.
2. Is "gun violence" the one thing that makes things unsafe in the USA?
You'd have no worries about knives, or just about a group without weapons ganging up on you?
3. Safe for whom?
4. Wouldn't this be a reason to regulate guns?
You're arguing that guns end up in the hands of the wrong people.... the obvious fix to that is to prevent that from happening as much as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
That there is no inherent correlation between gun ownership and gun violence.
The logical extrapolation is that, rather than addressing the very beneficial practice of gun ownership, you should be addressing the problem with violence and irresponsible attitudes towards guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:04AM
The question is whether or not we're better served by having such free access to it or not and both Australia and the UK are better data points as you can compare just the effect of firearms without changes in the culture.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @02:08AM (11 children)
In the US most gun violence happens where guns are prohibited.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:42AM (10 children)
Lol, that doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Do you think all the gang shootings happen in gun-free zones?
Or all the shootings in commission of crimes?
Or all the suicides?
Hell, not even a majority of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones - shooters don't pick easy targets, they pick targets that are connected to their rage, typically "going postal" where they work.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @07:00AM (2 children)
You obviously haven't done any research.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:59PM
Are you seriously trying to convince us that robbery and gang shootings happen in gun-free zones?
REALLY?
OK. Give us ONE citation, even a half-assed practically made up citation from a super biased pro-gun website.
Go ahead.
You can't. Because not even the nuttiest gun nuts are that stupid.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:13PM
Another day, another workplace mass shooting in a full-gun zone. [foxnews.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @01:41PM (6 children)
Technically guns aren't prohibited in NYC or Chicago but mhajicek is practically correct in general.
You can draw a nice graph of "amount of gun control" vs "amount of gun violence" and they correlate pretty strongly.
For example its virtually impossible to legally own or buy a gun in Chicago its extremely heavily controlled for 3 million or so Chicago residents and crime rates are spectacular.
Yet you go north to Wisconsin with twice as many people where guns are about as easy to buy off the shelf (and conceal carry) as popcorn and despite there being about twice as many people, WI has a murder rate about a thousand times lower, and even lower if you exclude the slum areas of Milwaukee.
Generally speaking as advice to foreigners visiting the USA if its impossible to legally purchase guns and ammo where you're visiting, then its a dangerous as hell place to be and you should GTFO as rapidly as possible, but if the local walmart has bricks of .22 LR ammo on the shelves next to the soup cans and you can cash and carry firearms from the gun store down the street, then its basically a zero crime area and you probably don't have to lock your doors etc.
Its generally a truism in the USA that if the police have to enforce weird gun control laws then its a very dangerous and violent location but if there are no gun laws then the police do nothing all day but issue speeding tickets and spend all night chasing meth/alcohol users and the occasional domestic dispute (also usually alcohol inspired)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:33PM (5 children)
Lolwut? Wisconsin has twice the population density of Chicago or NYC?
More alt-facts, eh?
You can draw a nice graph of population density vs amount of gun violence they correlate even more strongly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:05PM (4 children)
Yeah, I hypothesis that:
Population Density causes crime, including gun violence.
Gun violence induces people to "do something" which causes gun restrictions, which generally don't help much.
This would account for the high correlations observed, as well as removing any causal relationship with regard to laws affecting rates of violence (either way). Then again, it is merely my working hypothesis, and I don't have the money or time to do testing.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @03:26PM (2 children)
If you want to make a "new urbanist" really cry, instead of all this gun foolishness just solve the problem at the source and zone/regulate suburban level low density living for the sake of reducing crime. Obviously the problem can't be the kind of people who live in cities, the problem must be the city population density itself, so as a human rights violation we must demolish the cities. I'm down with that in theory although I like the idea of keeping cities as a "containment zone" for problematic people. Contaminating the rural areas isn't going to fix anything.
I find the density argument rather bogus but I'm willing to run with it for the LOLs.
So put a criminal in solitary confinement and they're not magically cured although they were alone which supposedly matters.
Or for that matter it implies having the family over for a birthday party somehow magically quadruples the crime rate. Well, maybe, for some families, trivial stuff like back yard noise violations if the party runs late, or parking violations because of all the cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:08PM (1 child)
I find you rather bogus and I've got at least as much evidence to back up my beliefs as you do yours.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @07:21PM
The difference is that VLM wants to be left alone with the means to take care of himself, whereas you want to violently render VLM and everyone else helpless (except for those pesky criminals which always seem to have ways to harm others regardless of "legal" restrictions).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:06PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Monday June 05 2017, @12:29AM (8 children)
The issue in the United States isn't so much the guns themselves, as your Switzerland example shows, but the toxic gun culture in the USA. Gun ownership might be benign, even beneficial, if the majority of citizens are have a communitarian and peace-loving ethic, receive compulsory military training, and are strictly monitored for criminal or psychiatric problems. That's hard to implement if you are starting from the assumption that gun ownership is a right. That's always been our problem.
We should treat it more like having a driver's license. It's no great difficulty to obtain a driver's license but we do demand a level of competency which we test for, and if you break the laws enough times you can have this privilege taken from you for a period of time or permanently. Owning a gun is even more serious and potentially deadly than driving a car yet we have less restrictions on it because 250 years ago guns existed and cars didn't. The 2nd Amendment as it is formulated is wrong for our current world
I own guns, and I want private gun ownership to continue, but you won't see an NRA sticker on my car. Given the opportunity I would run away from my house before blowing away an intruder--the proper thing to do. It was too easy for me to get the firearms I have. I should have had to do more training to demonstrate my competency. If everyone who owned guns in the USA was like me then our stats on gun violence would look more like Switzerland's.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday June 05 2017, @12:36AM (6 children)
How exactly is our gun culture toxic? If you're law abiding you can have guns. If you aren't you can't. If you aren't you can get guns outside the law. If caught you face heavy penalties.
I'm not seeing a lot of white supremacist folks using guns (see: Oregon asshole who used a knife). I'm not seeing open carry states having a surge in gun violence. What I am seeing is a lot of shootings in Chicago, where from what I hear it's damned near impossible to get a gun.
Guns don't kill people, physics kills people (wish I knew who to attribute that to, it didn't come out of my brain).
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:17AM
Congratulations, you're the problem.
The gun culture is what prevents any sort of meaningful work be done in preventing people who are at a high risk of abusing firearms to have them. Limiting the kinds of firearms people are allowed to have and checking to make sure that people wanting to buy them aren't mentally ill, criminals or otherwise disqualified from purchasing them gets fought tooth and nail by the NRA and other gun rights clubs.
There's literally tens of thousands of people killed every year through suicide alone, not to mention the people who are accidentally maimed or killed and the people who are killed by criminals that obtained their firearms either through theft or by buying them on the black market.
Hunting and target shooting are the only legitimate reasons for owning firearms by non-law enforcement/security people. Self-defense is a really big tip off that a person shouldn't be allowed to own a gun and in some countries, you're required to have a reason for owning a gun and self-defense is not included in the list.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:51AM (1 child)
Then you are not looking.
Dylan Roof - Charleston Church Shooter
Michael Wage Page - Sikh Temple Shooter
Alexandre Bissonnette - Quebec Mosque Shooter
Adam Purinton - Olathe Kansas Bar Shooter [heavy.com]
Allen Scarsella - Shot 5 BLM protestors [atlantablackstar.com]
And that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure I could easily find 10x that if I googled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:37PM
HEY! You better stop poo-pooing the GP's alternative facts, or perhaps more appropriate, selective memory.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @01:56PM (1 child)
We use them all the time, just perfectly legally for target practice and other completely legal sporting purposes. Its a valid hobby.
Also the logical operation of (not (hating your own race)) doesn't magically auto imply hates all other races under any system of logic. That guilt trip is only applied to white people. Black people not hating their own race doesn't imply magically they somehow magically must hate Samoans for example. Its a constant part of Hollywood propaganda. Much as they never make a mistake in their science and computer narrative naturally they never make a mistake in their characterization of white people who are not self loathing. The point of this is most white people who are not into self loathing are not necessarily white supremacists and generally don't hate any race, although they particularly do not hate whites, which is admittedly highly politically incorrect.
What you will see a lot of is 100 black dudes shot 100 black victims in Chicago last weekend, and some white guy in Texas climbed a university tower and shot a couple students back in the 60s, so logically the highest safety priority is to take guns away from law abiding white people. I mean, white people with legally owned guns kill almost as many people per year as lightning, its obviously a high priority (LOL)
And gun control is just a dog whistle for anti-white racism, what they always mean is we need to make it impossible for white people to legally own guns. Never hear them say "we gotta take all the guns away from the Jews" or "we gotta take all the guns away from the Koreans". Gun control is implicitly an anti-white racist topic. Only racists are "into" gun control. Its sorta like how pre-civil rights era only racists cared about implementing "poll taxes" and "voting tests" in the pre-60s post civil war deep south.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @09:13PM
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:52PM
An excellent 90's sitcom. [wikiquote.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:58PM
You mean Toxic Ghetto Thug Culture. In absence of guns they would use knives. Calling it "Gun Culture" is a slander to many upstanding, law-abiding, gun owners, who hunt and hobby shoot. You are trying to re-frame a debate which you would lose otherwise by changing up the definitions because you cannot argue against Switzerland example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @06:38AM
The reason Switzerland has low rate of gun violence is that owning a gun there is a privilege, not a right. Background checks, mental evaluation and continuous law abiding is needed to keep it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pvanhoof on Monday June 05 2017, @09:12AM (1 child)
Switzerland has a high gun ownership because a) citizens have to serve in the military and b) once you had to serve in the miltary you have to keep your army issued rifle with you in your house. Note that the Swiss people I know all hate having this goddamn thing in their house. Also note that they have a registered box of (numbered) bullets and that these bullets get counted by the government. You're not supposed to fire them.
Also note that most Swiss people are peaceful and the ones who don't live in the cities live in mountain villages where everybody knows each other. It's a bad idea to start pointing guns at people you've known for years. You might have to leave your house and go live somewhere else after that. As everybody in the village will hate you. But then again, this stuff simply doesn't happen much to a highly civilized country like Switzerland.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:10PM
Ah, the myth of the swiss guns. [nih.gov]
Switzerland has lower firearm ownership rates than the US and a much lower handgun ownership rate.
The army myth is particularly egregious, only people above a certain rank were required to keep their rifle at home, equating to just 25% of households and over the last decade and a half they've switched to keeping the rifles at local depots in town because swiss suicide rates were off the chart compared to neighboring countries.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday June 05 2017, @10:08AM
Here's another anecdote...
Kennesaw is a surburb just North of Atlanta, Georgia. The citizens of that little town were being invaded by Atlanta folks, having their stuff taken, and other sometimes violent crimes.
I know of this because some of my family live in its environs.
The fed-up citizens and city council were being overwhelmed with high crime rates. So they passed a law. *REQUIRING* everyone to be armed!!!!
Here's the Wikipedia writeup on it. [wikipedia.org]
TLDR:
So, for what its worth, this is what happened there, when citizens got fed up and quit begging government to fix it - and did it themselves.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]