No - those aren't arguments I'd make, because I don't believe either of them to be true.

Perfect - totally agree with you. I don't think we've really disagreed on much at all.

Mind you, that stat is only for 8 months, and only gunfire deaths.

So you could theoretically argue that the higher rate of homicide in Detroit requires... more policing?

There is a separate stat for accidental gunfire.

I'm doing 8 things at once today - the link said 2013 deaths. In any case, my 27 deaths stat seems legit.

Okay - so 333 homicides... and 150 of them were of police officers, if we combine the stats? That seems way off.

I don't think that's actually accurate at all.

I can't be "less cute" - I had no motive. It is obvious the numbers of police deaths would be less than non-police. What would I gain in any sort of argument you seem to think I have?

The Detroit police department seems to show 150 deaths due to gunfire in 2013.

It certainly is - I'm glad my country doesn't have this issue.

Yeah, I see that too.

I didn't call for a "comparative study" at all - I just thought it would be interesting to put gunfire deaths of civilians and police officers up against each other for a quick look.

I'm thinking you are attributing some sort of motive to my original request that just isn't there, and I like your exercise... but you need to change it up a bit:

I just thought it would be a good exercise to put the two up against each other, to show the disparity and talk about the reasons for it, etc.

Not sure how you make that distinction, exactly. 27 shooting deaths. There were more deaths sustained in other ways as well.

It sure is. I wasn't claiming the numbers would be similar at all.

No - I wasn't trying to do that at all. I thought it would be a good comparison to make overall. I know the number of police officers killed by gunfire would be much lower - they wear vests and have other training that would help them survive a gunfight, etc.

That's what I said, yes.

We'll see, you may be right. I see 27 deaths from gunfire for police officers this year so far.