I'm not suggesting we kill all mentally ill people. Just the ones that pose a threat to others. Swinging a machete at cops qualifies as posing a threat to others. It's all about risk vs reward. The risks of attempting to cure a violent psychotic outweigh the potential rewards.

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The raving lunatic with a machete is a clear threat to everyone in the area. Incapacitating him with tasers is far quicker and safer (to the cops and civilians) than trying to contain him with riot shields. Is there a chance that the taser could kill him? Sure. However, the chance is far lower than if you shoot him with a gun. And again, it isn't just the life of one man at stake. The suspect was obviously deranged, violent and unpredictable. At any point, he could have made a beeline for one of the cops or some random pedestrian and done serious damage. That's 30 minutes of putting lives at risk vs 1 minute of relatively safe tasering.

As for the possible positive outcomes... what, he recovers and leads a mediocre life working as a janitor because nobody wants to hire someone with a history of violent psychosis? How many years would it take to reach that point? How much taxpayer money would be spent? Is a single lost cause worth all that time, money and risk? If humanity were on the verge of extinction and every life really mattered then sure, he might be worth it. However, there's no shortage of perfectly sane and productive members of society that don't run around swinging machetes and howling like animals. Society already puts down animals that pose a threat to humans. Why not extend that policy to the most dangerous animal of all?

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I don't want guns banned, but I want them to be like in most other civilized countries where shootings, mass shootings and gun suicides are far less per capita. Severely controlled.

America has an obsession and even addiction to guns, which is shown in the people trying to blame everything else - @Mordhaus you say stuff like "incorrectly secured gun" as if the incorrectly secured somehow negates the gun part. If it was a incorrectly secured handgrenade, what then? Or an incorrectly secured machete?

I'm not saying you're a bad person at all (or tha other pro-gun people are), but this is what alcoholics or substance abusers do about their substance.

Sad thing is, while I appreciate that a hell of a lot of work was required to make the robots and program them, this is ultimately frustrating to watch compared to the master shipwright fixing a boat, or that guy that created a mastercraft machete from an old saw blade...

We are giving up something in our chase for industrialisation, something we might not realise we miss until it's gone.

Nice machetes...partial to the Condor Goloks and Parangs for not much more.

No, a police dog is a dog. A tazer is a tool. (I could have made a terrible joke there, but will refrain)
I understand that humans being more 'valuable' than 'animals' (as if we aren't animals) is the normal way of thinking, but you make the knee jerk assumption/implication that they are the only options, either let a dog attack a dangerous armed person that WILL hurt/kill the dog or do it manually and be hurt yourself. There are MANY other options always available that don't involve releasing the unsuspecting dog into harms way. Most don't even involve deadly force. It would NEVER be proper to let the dog attack a known armed threatening person instead of using one's brain to deal with the danger in a safer manner, but that is what you've said you would do.
As a society, we have partially reversed the thinking that 'humans are more important than animals'. That is shown by the creation of many 'preserves' that stop people from farming/hunting on land to save animals, and that ends up killing some people (through starvation, malnutrition, etc). So while your statement is usually correct, people do usually consider humans more valuable than animals, as an absolutist statement it is wrong. That kind of thinking has put us in a position where the food chains are being broken because we only thought about humans (and not very thoroughly).

I'm sorry to hear about your cat, it's a terrible thing to have to help them go, but often the right thing for them. :-(

Your comments were "a dog is a tool" and "If I were tasked with taking a person with a machete into custody, I would be happy to have a dog take a chance over a person risking their life." Both show a complete lack of concern for the dog, or even thought for it as a living, thinking, feeling being. The latter also shows a propensity to put the unsuspecting dog in far greater danger rather than accept a manageable danger themselves. In your scenario, you could easily disarm 'Machette' with your Taser, firearm, car, other officers, etc. with minimal or no danger to the officers, only more time taken, but you say you would send in the dog to get sliced. I find that terrible and not the words of someone that truly cares for the animal.
EDIT: " I would be happy to have a dog take a chance over a person risking their life." really translates to 'I would be happy to have a dog risk their life over a person taking a chance.'...and I and others find that thinking uncaring and irresponsible towards the living, feeling being (your tool) who's care and welfare you took responsibility for.
You are quite correct, I could never be a cop. I don't have the mentality to constantly tell others what to do (and insist they follow my directions), or to deal with the drudgery of writing people tickets, paperwork, etc. I could not dehumanize people I think are criminals daily and treat them like the inhuman scum they 'are'. I would have too hard a time enforcing laws I disagreed with, and I would fear that dealing with people at their worst would make me think the worst of all people, and so cause me to treat them all like the awful criminals they are (in my mind), making me a douchebag with authoratah. I don't want to be that in any way.
I feel like being a cop is a truly hard job that screws with one's mind. Again, why I think therapy on the job should be mandatory.
Honest discussion is never a waste of time.

That makes you an unbelievable piece of shit IMO. A dog is an animal, not a 'tool'. A living, breathing, feeling animal that trusts you to take care of it. You don't put an animal that you accept control over and the obligation to care for in a position where they protect you at the expense of their own life, especially when you have many other options. The dog doesn't understand the danger you put them in, they expect they're holding the person, just like when they trained. They've been trained to think they aren't hurting the person, and that there's no chance they'll be hurt back. In fact, they're trained to think they get a treat/play time afterwards, not knifed.
I'm so disappointed in you. Don't get a dog.
The next time you see a person with a knife/machete, how about back off and wait for Swat...or try your tazer, or pepper spray, or bean bags, or your car, etc.... You have many other options besides just putting a dog in danger for no reason other than you're scared and uncaring.

EDIT: Your statement, and the fact that it's how most cops seem to think, is proof positive that these 'tools' are misused more often than not, and are treated unconscionably by those that are supposed to care for them. I think the ASPCA and other anti-animal abuse organizations should band together to work towards removing K-9 units from service as they are terrible for the dogs they use without a thought for the dogs welfare.
Dogs naturally act like furry, stupid/dumb/mentally challenged, sweet children, and should be treated as such.

In police work, a dog is a tool. You can use any tool properly or improperly. If I were tasked with taking a person with a machete into custody, I would be happy to have a dog take a chance over a person risking their life.

Poppycock!
Humans have always been cruel to each other and they always will be. Religion, nationality, these are all just excuses. We are herd animals, tribal in nature and this will never change. It is just natural for us to look at how we can seperate us and the ones we love from everybody else. The easiest way ist to look for looks, that's why we have racism. It's something we can see. Next are things like how we sound( language, nationality), how we act (mentality) and how we think (political and religious views).
We are simply more focused on recognizing what seperates us from each other than appreciating what connects us. That is what comes natural to us.
Empathy is the exception, the bonding agent between the chasms of social divide. Sometimes it comes to us naturally but the horrible truth is that we're more likely to hack each other to pieces with machetes than to reach out for each other.
We are flawed creatures looking for reasons to hate each other because that's the easy thing to do. It's in our nature. That's who we are, finding an "us" to pit against a "them"

I think these so-called unstoppable warlords that siphon off our aid is an even bigger myth. The United States of America defeated the British Empire, invaded Nazi Europe, dropped a nuclear fucking bomb on Axis Japan, sacrificed thousands of lives in Vietnam, stood head to head against the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis, landed on the moon, funded Nicaraguan revolutionaries using money from arms sales to Iran, assassinated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet we can't deal with warlords and civil wars in Africa where (at least with Rwandan civil war) weaponry is in the form of crate after crate of machetes made in China?

If all of those things are possible for the biggest super power in the world, how is it not possible to stop these warlords from siphoning our aid?

Lies.

We don't care so nothing of real consequence happens. All of those above events have one thing in common: our own goddamn self interest.

Everything sucks. May god have mercy on everyone's soul.

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I know I'm gonna get ripped apart, but I didn't care about the Red Wedding. After the initial shock of watching a pregnant woman get stabbed in the stomach, I was over it. This guy has one move, build up some stuff and then destroy it and watch the ripples. It's not a clever way of destroying something, it's informed by his love of Medieval Times. Also this probably doesn't bother anyone else but the special effects and the fact that a person just sits there while being stabbed instead of at least doubling over in pain is ridiculous. You get more defense out of people in Rwanda from machete strikes, and blood doesn't come out of a neck like that, just watch hockey skate accidents!

I loved Seasons 1 and 2, Season 3 was dragging on and on with me only really caring about the Adventures of Ygritte and Jon Snow, and Aryas little stuff. Actually the pairing of Jamie and that huge woman was pretty cool for a bit but I also got tired of what a sad sack he was.

I have two problems with Game of Thrones though that I think people will agree with, so read this if you already hate everything I wrote.

ONE: There's not enough of it. I'm not talking about Khaleesi wandering the desert, I'm talking about character development. These are HUGE books with tons of scenes, I gotta think that somewhere along the line a character or two is developed with some small things rather than BIG 3 minute scenes. I want the series to be 20 episodes long, 2 hours and episode. I know people want action and every episode has to matter but aren't the books written in POV format? Why not have some POV parts in the show with some personal narrative!

TWO: The fucking praise it receives. I get there's a lot of book readers and it's a very good series, but it's not the second coming. This isn't even the best thing on TV right now, and it certainly isn't better than The Wire. Game of Thrones has a bunch of Emmys, The Wire has only two Nominations...they didn't even WIN ANYTHING! Could that be because Game of Thrones has like One black guy...who's obsessed with raping a white woman by the way, interesting there.

Oh and The Wire is Real, that shit really fucking happens everyday still. Yet this week people are crying like pussies because their favorite characters get got. Even though I'm a huge fan, I'm kind of embarrassed after this episode to be associated with a lot of the internet. I mean I thought it was cool when Buffy died the second time, it wasn't the end of the fucking world though. Also Buffy came back to life, so good reference to use right? Right?! Ahhh shut up.

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