The Economist article you mention was even harsher, in most European countries the statistic is ZERO.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21636033-united-states...

"American law enforcement is unusually lethal: even the partial numbers show that the police shot and killed at least 458 people last year. By comparison, those in England and Wales shot and killed no one."

I'm a HUGE proponent of nonlethal alternatives, I don't understand why there isn't massive funding for better tasers.

There are no "nonlethal" alternatives, just less lethal as the words of art put it. One of the many reasons I haven't yet invested in pepper spray is that the threshold for my using it should be the same as for my handgun.

Any time you get into physical combat things can get seriously ugly, see e.g. Eric Garner.

As for US vs. European statistics, you always need to make sure each is honest (e.g. are they counting all populations in their countries? Counterwise, remove the US south and we look rather European), and there's no question that the US is flatly more violent, e.g. remove all homicides with guns and our rate is still higher.

Wow, your first thought is that Europe might be underestimating how many people are killed by police, not the USA? The USA doesn't even count that number.

I don't automatically trust any government's statistics.

In addition, I know that you have to investigate before comparing what are ostensibly the same statistics coming from different countries.

You can not precautionary discredit statistics or studies without evidence. When you accuse someone or something of being wrong in public, show some evidence. This makes you look like you have no arguments left.

I don't understand your phrase "the threshold for my using it should be the same as for my handgun"

I'm going to buy pepper spray soon, and I understood that it was basically nonlethal. I've been mugged a few times already, and I do believe it would have helped in at least one case (in which I absolutely would not have used a gun).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray

Technically, as I say above, it's viewed as "less lethal".

It can definitely kill, and I've read people have been charged for using it in what seemed to be legit self-defense. It's definitely force and not something to be used casually.

It's theoretically possible to cause someone's death just by turning on a siren or flashing lights at them. Does that mean that the threshold for using those things should be the same as for a gun?

Even if the threshold is the same, that doesn't mean that the pepper spray isn't a much superior alternative, especially for people who are supposed to be protecting civilians, including civilians they're arresting.

Do you have a citation about the statistics becoming European if you remove the US south? This PDF breaks down police-related deaths by region:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf

And while the South is higher than other regions, the others are hardly what I'd call "low".

I was unclear in the "we look rather European" bit, that's for all violent crime and/or homicides, not just police caused ones, for which as I understand the statistics are iffy, i.e. there's no requirement to report them.

Tasers have devolved from a less-lethal gun alternative to an electro shock based compliance tool, nothing more than a cattle prod used on humans.

As far as I can tell, the number given in the Economist article, 40-something, is deaths just from shootings. A police officer hasn't been shot to death in the UK in years.