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Nov 26, 2022Liked by K. Liam Smith

Interesting take, but I think that "murderers" are not the primary constituent of the people whom police shoot. The murderers that are caught (not all of them) are usually spared death unless they put themselves into the "shootable" group by running and/or fighting back or holding something in their hand. How to quantify the "shootable" group though? Perhaps count those convicted of resisting arrest? Does that data exist? Keep at it though - there is an objective truth here that is definitely "taboo" to discuss in mainstream circles.

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My guess was that committing murder puts someone at much higher risk for a lethal interaction with a police officer. I assume (but not sure) that murder correlates with other criminal activity (like armed robbery) that also puts you at increased risk. But murder is a crime with a much higher rate of being solved than any other crime, so it has the most accurate stats for the race/gender of the perpetrator.

It does take the massive 1:24 gender ratio down to 1:3 so criminal behavior does explain the vast majority of that gap.

But as for the race gap swapping from 1:2 to 3:1 with white Americans more likely to be killed when normalizing by murder, I’m not sure what the explanation on that one is. I want to dig into this more.

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