Darren Wilson, who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown six to eight times, fired more bullets than the entire British police force did last year.

To give you some perspective on how militarized and trigger happy our police departments are here in America, Darren Wilson, who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown six to eight times,  fired more bullets than the entire British police force did last year.

The Economist reports:

Last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012 the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.

The explanation for this gap is simple. In Britain, guns are rare. Only specialist firearms officers carry them; and criminals rarely have access to them. The last time a British police officer was killed by a firearm on duty was in 2012, in a brutal case in Manchester. The annual number of murders by shooting is typically less than 50.

Five Thirty Eight disputed the data, but added, “No matter how the numbers are counted, English and Welsh police officers fire guns much less frequently than do their American counterparts. Not every U.S. police agency reports discharge numbers.”

The use of deadly force should be the last alternative, not the first.

H/T: My BFF @ComgenKDT with thanks.