Just about half of all American adults live in a house with a gun. I would say that's tending towards being armed.
As far as paranoia goes, you only have to look as far as HN, where (according to the commenters) every company is evil, every regulation is oppressive, every new technology is dangerous, every assertion by a professional is a lie, every government is tyrannical, every intention is malicious, and every Apple software release is worse than the last :-)
So for cops to think every person they come in contact with is armed is not outside of the realm of reasonable.
If you yourself are a paranoiac it is hard to see why this is wrong but I'm not so it's jarring but I understand it.
Mostly fair, but the figure for "homes with a gun" is around 40%. And I assume some portion of the group isn't paranoid or "heavily armed".
I was debating the rather blunt assertion "Americans tend to be heavily-armed paranoiacs" versus your more nuanced notion of who cops tend to come in contact with.
I think you're exaggerating here. HN doesn't have a universal opinion about anything. Sure, there are people who have the attitude you describe (although it's rare that a single person has all of those stances), but there are also people who don't. HN commenters overall have pretty diverse opinions about those things, and for each one of them you can find commenters who are of the opposite opinion.
> HN doesn't have a universal opinion about anything.
That's a matter of perspective. I don't think a literal interpretation is useful. There will always be some troll promoting vile or insane things for attention (among other reasons). Functionally? The internet tends to ensure there is always some zeitgeist. Eg https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28232.html
The world is a big pile of topics, including recent events and discoveries. Users don't see the most sacred cows or derided topics, because they are not promoted, flagged or otherwise down in the pile. This is common among most modern internet communities, as opposed to flat hierarchy formats like newsgroups.
> HN commenters overall have pretty diverse opinions about those things
As far as paranoia goes, you only have to look as far as HN, where (according to the commenters) every company is evil, every regulation is oppressive, every new technology is dangerous, every assertion by a professional is a lie, every government is tyrannical, every intention is malicious, and every Apple software release is worse than the last :-)
So for cops to think every person they come in contact with is armed is not outside of the realm of reasonable.
If you yourself are a paranoiac it is hard to see why this is wrong but I'm not so it's jarring but I understand it.