"Saturated" is a poor description. Police definitely need guns available, but do they need them on their hip all the time? They often have shotguns in their cars because, sure, sometimes it's important. But they don't patrol with a shotgun in their hands. Guns aren't so prevalent as to need that.

Of course they need them on their person, having a gun in the trunk of the car does exactly nothing when confronted with a situation where having a gun can be the difference between life and death - that is some victim's life or that of the police officer. Do they always need to have them on their person? Probably not but there is a certain symbolic value in having armed police spread around society. The value here is that those who are intent on committing crimes can never assume that they will be safe from harm, no matter whether they are. The police is the long arm of the law whether you like it or not, the job can involve violent confrontations. It is a good thing to have police officers train in non-violent means of defusing situations and such is nearly always preferred over the violent alternative but the fact remains that sometimes violence is the only alternative - other than giving up and letting someone who is more violent take over.

In Sweden - where I live - there is a specific class of police called 'dialogpolis' (dialogue police). Their task is to use non-violent means to try to defuse situations, especially those around demonstrations and political manifestations. They are unarmed and wear civilian clothes but are recognisable by their yellow vests with the word 'dialogpolis' on the back. This part of the police corps was started after rioters and looters left large parts of the centre of Gothenburg in shambles in 2001 [1]. Dialogue police can only function in the presence of 'monologue police', i.e. the regular, uniformed and armed type. They are the carrot to the normal police's stick. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of this type of policing and they're often mentioned in a derogative way, partly due to the fact that they often seem to go too far in their attempts to ingratiate themselves with criminal gangs - grilling sausages and playing football does not seem to keep the gangs from committing violence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Summit_2001

> Do they always need to have them on their person? Probably not but there is a certain symbolic value in having armed police spread around society.

I’d argue the opposite. There’s negative symbolic value.

This is an argument activists have made for years in favor of gun control. The prevalence of guns in US society has made us objectively far less safe.

There are two things to this:

Compare the rate of gun-related crime in a country like Switzerland (where guns are readily available and many people have been trained to use them) with that in Germany (where guns are as rare as hens teeth among the non-criminal contingent of the population) and you'll notice that Switzerland does not suffer unduly under a wave of gun crime. Why not? What is it in Swiss society which makes it possible for people to have access to firearms, the training to use them yet the wherewithal to know when not to use them? Germany and Switzerland are neighbours, they mostly speak the same language, they're both affluent countries. What would Germany look like were firearms as widely spread as they are in Switzerland? Now compare the Swiss data to those in the USA and a clear difference shows. What is the difference between Swiss and American society which can explain this difference? Is it affluence? Switzerland is a rich country but so is the USA. Is it the fact that the difference between rich and less affluent is bigger in the USA than it is in Switzerland? Is it the amount of cultural diversity? The USA is a diverse country, Switzerland is largely homogeneous. Is is the overarching culture? Is it the difference in trust level? Switzerland is a high-trust country, the USA is not.

The other part on the gun control question is the age-old adage that in countries where guns are outlawed only outlaws have guns. They're not exactly hard to come by after all. It seems to work in a country like Japan but it probably takes Japanese culture as well as the physical lack of firearms on the island nation to pull this off.

Oh, yeah I think these comparisons actually are interesting. I'm not aware of any good studies about the root causes of gun violence in the US, but I'd be interested in reading them. My totally unsubstantiated guess would be that we have higher rates of mental illness, inequality, drug/alcohol abuse (which are mental/physical illnesses but important to call out separately) and access to firearms than almost every other western society.

> The other part on the gun control question is the age-old adage that in countries where guns are outlawed only outlaws have guns. They're not exactly hard to come by after all.

That's true, and it's also true that guns aren't the only horrible weapon you can use against someone. But that accepts the premise that a lot of gun violence is one person using a gun maliciously against another. While that does happen, in the US most gun deaths are either suicides or accidents.

And besides, while I'm sure it's not a problem for connected criminal enterprises to get guns, I'm confident we can create a system that would foil a kid amassing weapons for a school shooting. Degrees matter.

According to this, 25% of privately owned firearms are due to previous or active military service. Switzerland also has compulsory military service and you can't carry in public.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/switzerlan...

Isn’t most crime caused by poverty? I would suspect that a country that both has a functioning government and a reliable social safety net wouldn’t have as much crime as one that doesn’t.

Take a look at Sweden for an example of a country where poverty is more or less absent due to a wide social safety net while crime is on the rise. It is not poverty which causes gangs to go out and rob teenagers of their expensive branded jackets, iPhones and sneakers. Some turn to crime to get luxury items, some do it to dominate others (Denmark has created a specific category of 'dominance crime' for this phenomenon), some do it to gain street cred etc.

The number of defensive instances of gun use are at least equal to the number of criminal use (some studies say it dwarfs it but that's been questioned). If defensive is even 1 greater than offensive, wouldn't guns have made us net safer?

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more I can see how the average outcome is deadlier with guns regardless of who "wins"

Yeah, the situation isn't what most people would expect. Most gun deaths in the US are suicides and accidents. It's relatively rare that there's an actual gunfight.

I was once reading budgets for the NHS, and I had no idea why there was a line item for glass injuries. Apparently, smashing the bottom of a beer bottle and stabbing someone in the stomach is a popular activity in the UK.