I’m sure the police would aggressively campaign against real-life save points. It wouldn’t work out well for them.
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Just let my boot stomp human faces forever, and nobody(*) will get hurt.
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The right to bear arms was intended to replace a standing military. If we were actually following the original intent, the cops wouldn’t have anywhere near this firepower.
If the need actually arose where it was needed, they would deputize enough armed citizens to deal with the problem- Which would mean they could not move offensively against their own citizens…
In theory, mind you- The real world never works as well a it does on paper.
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"And if you’re black in a lot of communities, all bets are off. I may just beat the hell out of you. Or tase you or kill. Because, you know, no one with authority over me will care.
“Be aware that I will also make traffic stops if I think you’re driving too nice a car (has happened to my St. Louis mixed-race grandson), looked at me ‘wrong’ or whatever. No reason. You look black. Do I need a reason?”
That is what is happening all over. It scares me. I have mixed race relatives and black friends. It needs to stop. It just needs to stop.
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Yeah, it’s the kind of yellow journalism you get by quoting a really offensive op-ed from that disreputable tabloid The LA Times* and providing intelligent commentary from a perspective of somebody who doesn’t agree.
(*I think I saw it in the Washington Post, another disreputable rag.)
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Some police are public safety officers. But these days they claim to be “Law Enforcement Officers”. Much different.
That’s nice and all, but there are no laws to be enforced that allow “law enforcement” to act the parts of judge, jury and executioner.
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He’s talking in the context of Ferguson, so when he’s dismissively mentioning that there are some bad cops and that cops should wear cameras, he knows that the police in Ferguson are not wearing their name badges and are attacking anyone with cameras. The fact that they’re not only doing that, but that more than one of them are in the press as having done so, says that they’re bad cops acting with the approval of bad management.
One of the good things that came out of the Occupy Oakland mess was that the Oakland Police department got this, and made a policy that cops had to wear their nametags on duty, and would be punished if they didn’t.
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We had something like that in nursing. It was called professionalism. We were held to a higher standard of behavior than a layperson. I think cops should be held to a higher standard of behavior as well, because they are NOT laypeople.
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America has already descended into a kind of plutocracy and a
substantial portion of those people with guns are cheering that on and
supporting the police in Ferguson.
I also believe there are quite a few gun owners who do not agree with the show of force put on by the police in Ferguson. Gun-owners can not simply be lumped into one group which we can make sweeping generalizations about other than they all own guns.
While I suspect that a despot would have a tough time in Switzerland
where gun culture is very tied to responsibility and duty, one in
America would simply hire half of the gun-lovers to fight the other
half, and would have no trouble doing so. One might argue that this has
already happened.
I also don’t believe it would be a simple matter of “hiring” a large segment of the population to turn on the other. I give Americans more credit than that. Our gun culture is more diverse than Switzerland’s because we are more diverse than Switzerland. But if American gun-culture were as irresponsible and trigger-happy as you seem to be suggesting, there would be A LOT more gun violence. We Americans own hundreds of millions of firearms.
Did anyone notice that Sunil Dutta isn’t just a cop but also an academic - a professor of homeland security, whatever that is?
This guy is teaching law enforcement students.
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Uh oh, my post that made light of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has been deleted. Didn’t realize that was blasphemy. I am suitably chastened.
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It didn’t make sense out of context after the Luck Dragon flew through.
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That’s like blaming a regular company worker for the misdeeds of it’s management. I’ll bet most cops probably need their job just like anyone else and don’t want to risk getting shunned by the “club”. So it’s easier to just do your job and be a good cop but stop short of being a whistle-blower. It all boils down to how much the public will tolerate this shit and how proactive those in charge of the police are in changing it. After all, the public voted the politicians into office and the police chief is usually an elected position and those are the ones with the ultimate responsibility.
Sheriffs are generally elected. Chiefs are generally appointed. Elected officials must approve and have the power to revoke the appointment.
Which is why, IMO, every elected office needs to have a well-known, easily-achievable mechanism to get a recall petition circulated, and a fairly low bar to have a special election for the purpose of a vote of confidence.
If the mayor of Ferguson knew he could lose his job in the next 90 days, I would bet the Chief of Police would already be on notice.
Daddy beat me so I became a cop.
Right, I was thinking of sheriffs. Still, the power to “condone behavior” rests with the “elected” politicians (and their lobbyists). 
That’s why I used the phrase “a substantial portion.” I know that there are people out there who are very adamant about rights including the rights of black people they don’t know. But you know there are lots of people out there who are adamant about rights including only their own rights and in some cases especially not including those of black people they don’t know.
I’d like to point out that for a western nation America has an absurd amount of gun violence. The idea that you are trying to use America’s current level of gun violence to support the point that America does not have substantial numbers of irresponsible guns owners surprises me.
It’s not just that the American murder rate is the same as Yemen’s and higher than Iran’s. Wikipedia’s list of the 50 cities with the highest murder rates in the world includes 4 American cities, which is 4 more than Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia combined. The average GDP per capita of the countries other than America with cities on that list is $12,635 (and that’s being pulled up by Puerto Rico - I have no idea what is going on in San Juan but it seems pretty bad).
Plus, America is pretty unique in the world in that it is the nation where people go on shooting sprees. There are plenty of other rations where some guy went on a shooting spree that one time, but no other developed nations where mass shootings need to have an extra “wow” factor to get national news coverage. Look at this interactive map of every school shooting in the world since 1996: http://o.canada.com/news/politics-and-the-nation/crime-and-justice/interactive-mass-shootings-around-the-world-since-1996. They are mostly in America.
When you say “But if American gun-culture were as irresponsible and trigger-happy as you seem to be suggesting, there would be A LOT more gun violence.” the only response I can think of is that you already have A LOT of gun violence. I think American gun-culture is irresponsible and trigger-happy exactly in proportion to the amount of gun violence America has.
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Your mileage may vary.
