When people see or have access to a gun, their behaviour becomes more aggressive.
A review of over 50 published studies reported that just the sight of weapons increases aggression in both angry and non-angry individuals. In one study, drivers with guns in their cars were significantly more likely to follow another vehicle too closely, make obscene gestures, or both.
In other studies, having a gun was associated with more aggressive thoughts and more hostile views of the world.
Cops, like the rest of us, have brains that link weapons with aggression too, and despite the firearms training that is supposed to mitigate the risk of an armed police officer getting trigger happy, there have been too many deaths* –
18 in the past decade and 14 in the last five years – from police gunfire. ( Thats in nz. I will leave it to others to compare that with america.
if lethal options of policing are instantly at hand, they are more likely to be used instead of the many other policing tactics, such as negotiations, dogs, handcuffing or other restraints.
In their response to the police's new Armed Response Teams, those roaming, gunned-up units that are now being trialled in three districts, researchers from Victoria University's Institute of Criminology laid out the evidence against this approach.
Mutual escalation was one – the idea that when police carry guns, criminals think they need to as well, resulting in more shootouts. The more criminals respond violently, the more police think they need to arm themselves. And on it goes.
There is no better example of this than the US, where 36,000 Americans die each year from gun violence, generating a growing call for removing firearms from the police altogether.
But the researchers argue that "disarming an armed police force is much more difficult than not allowing arms to be routinely used in the first place. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it is hard to put back in."
These experts concluded that based on the evidence, "cops in cars with guns makes communities less safe, not more."