4 ms·

Many of the evils in the US are rooted in the 2nd amendment and the NRA.

by kkotak 6y ago

beervirus 6y ago
1. Police are murdering people. 2. Only the police should have guns. Choose one.
- gopalv 6y ago
  Is that a dichotomy? The "only the police" almost makes it sound like that is what is being discussed around gun control laws. The cops in the US are definitely more jumpy than I'm comfortable with - their natural reaction to a car door closing and someone (or is it just me, I look like a rake with an afro) stepping towards them is to touch their gun, because they treat every person as possibly armed & dangerous. And it's not like I was in a high crime area either, all I needed was to know my way to SJC having missed 85.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Would the Police have shot Brianna Taylor if her boyfriend wasn't shooting at the cops? Sure, no-knock warrants were a problem. But Kenneth Walker's gun didn't make the situation any better. I'm not "victim blaming" Kenneth Walker or Brianna Taylor here. Its absolutely the cops fault for messing up the no-knock warrant. But in a country with 2nd amendment, cops have the difficult job of entering homes vs armed neutral parties. In the UK, cops can go in with nothing but a baton and be fine, because the UK citizenry don't have as many guns as US citizens do. -------- There's a huge and fundamental difference between UK cops and US cops if only because of the 2nd Amendment issue. Each encounter with the citizenry, even if they are neutral, can end up deadly due to our huge proliferation of guns. That stress in of itself could be making our cops more trigger happy, because US Cops enter life-or-death situations in higher frequency than other countries.
  - pluto9 6y ago
    It isn't Kenneth Walker's responsibility to "make the situation better". It is the police's responsibility to not create an unnecessary life-threatening situation in the first place. You're arguing that people should be deprived of the ability to defend themselves so that the police don't have to worry about the repercussions of trampling on their civil rights, and that somehow this will result in less trampling. Ban no-knock raids (which have dubious legality anyway) and situations like this wouldn't happen. Better yet, end the war on drugs altogether. Kenneth Walker keeps his right to self-defense, Breonna Taylor lives, no officer gets shot, the constitution remains unviolated, and nobody goes to jail for victimless crimes. Everybody wins. It is astounding to me that people argue "disarm Kenneth Walker so the police can fuck up his (wrong) house stress-free" is a better solution than that.
- progval 6y ago
  Alternative to 2: No one should have guns
  - beervirus 6y ago
    A long as were in fantasy land, everyone should get unicorns too.
seankimdesign 6y ago
Care to elaborate? I get that gun control is indeed an issue worthy of its own debate, but how do you go from discussing police brutality to legally armed civilians being the root of evil?
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  Not OP - but the absurd prevalence of privately owned guns means that the police go into every interaction thinking that the person on the other side could be armed and could kill them on a whim. They're not even wrong about that. We have more privately owned guns than people of sufficient age to own them. The police in other countries can take a much more relaxed attitude toward their interactions with the public because there's almost no chance of the person shooting them.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > police go into every interaction thinking that the person on the other side could be armed and could kill them on a whim. They could be, but are very unlikely to be. Despite the huge number of privately guns owned in America, the vast majority of cops will never be shot at nor have valid reason to shoot at somebody. Cops who constantly fear for their lives are operating under a warped view of reality. I think it's a culture problem for cops. They hang out on cop forums, cop chat rooms or facebook groups; they read cop newsletters and generally socialize with other cops. These groups have the effect of amplifying stories about violence against cops, because those stories are sensational and of obvious interest to cops, and that amplification in turn gives rise to a warped perspective on how risky their job actually is.
- jfk13 6y ago
  If the country wasn't so awash with guns, perhaps the police might not be quite so nervous and trigger-happy.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
It's the fetishization of guns as an instrument of power that is the problem. Laws don't make people do bad things.
- volkk 6y ago
  right. its not like our second amendment even allows us to protect ourselves from incompetent/evil cops. it only allows for you to shoot other civilians and prey you're in the right. if you even dare try to defend yourself against some plainclothed cops, you'll simply be killed in a heartbeat, or now deal with courts for ages and most likely be charged with something.
  - User23 6y ago
    This is categorically false. People can and have prevailed with a self-defense defense against killing police officers who failed to identify themselves as police. Also, Indiana for example explicitly legalizes home defense against "public servants"[1]. [1] https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-35-criminal-law-and-procedure/in-code-sect-35-41-3-2.html https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-35-criminal-law-and-proce...
  - kansface 6y ago
    2016 Man shoots three cops during no-knock raid and is found not guilty because they did not identify themselves as cops. https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-found-not-guilty-for-shooting-three-cops-during-noknock-raid-ehraX84ZEUi9Q0___1p4XA https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-f...
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    You're allowed to defend yourself, with arms and lethal violence, against unlawful police. There's a Supreme Court case about it called John Bad Elk versus US wherein police were trying to arrest John Bad Elk for shooting guns on his own land, which was legal, and when the police made to draw on him he shot them, killing at least one officer, and was found to have acted within the law. A more recent and more famous example is the rapper Tupac who witnessed police beating up a guy for no reason. Tupac grabbed a gun and told them to stop, and when the police shot at him, he shot back wounding one, and wasn't found to have committed any crime. Randy Weaver shot and killed a federal agent and was exonerated at trial. These are just examples from memory. I'm sure if you looked you'd find many more. It may not be wise to shoot out with the police, and you'd better be certain you're right, but you're absolutely permitted to use your guns on the police and kill them in some circumstances.
briandear 6y ago
How? How many criminals are members of the NRA? The 2nd Amendment was created precisely as a counter to a tyrannical government. The ACLU fights over the first amendment, the NRA fights over the 2nd — and you can’t have one without the other. Both organizations are valuable. Free speech and free association is an illusion unless there is a means to back it up. If the UK tomorrow decided that everyone had to go to concentration camps, how exactly would that effort be opposed? One of Hilter’s earliest efforts was to disarm civilians. The Soviets also did the same thing. Now why would they do that? To stop gun violence? Of course not, it was to prevent rebellion. Imagine if the students in Tiananmen Square were heavily armed.

Many of the evils in the US are rooted in the 2nd amendment and the NRA.

by kkotak 6y ago

Many of the evils in the US are rooted in the 2nd amendment and the NRA.

beervirus 6y ago

1. Police are murdering people. 2. Only the police should have guns. Choose one.

gopalv 6y ago
Is that a dichotomy? The "only the police" almost makes it sound like that is what is being discussed around gun control laws. The cops in the US are definitely more jumpy than I'm comfortable with - their natural reaction to a car door closing and someone (or is it just me, I look like a rake with an afro) stepping towards them is to touch their gun, because they treat every person as possibly armed & dangerous. And it's not like I was in a high crime area either, all I needed was to know my way to SJC having missed 85.
dragontamer 6y ago
Would the Police have shot Brianna Taylor if her boyfriend wasn't shooting at the cops? Sure, no-knock warrants were a problem. But Kenneth Walker's gun didn't make the situation any better. I'm not "victim blaming" Kenneth Walker or Brianna Taylor here. Its absolutely the cops fault for messing up the no-knock warrant. But in a country with 2nd amendment, cops have the difficult job of entering homes vs armed neutral parties. In the UK, cops can go in with nothing but a baton and be fine, because the UK citizenry don't have as many guns as US citizens do. -------- There's a huge and fundamental difference between UK cops and US cops if only because of the 2nd Amendment issue. Each encounter with the citizenry, even if they are neutral, can end up deadly due to our huge proliferation of guns. That stress in of itself could be making our cops more trigger happy, because US Cops enter life-or-death situations in higher frequency than other countries.
- pluto9 6y ago
  It isn't Kenneth Walker's responsibility to "make the situation better". It is the police's responsibility to not create an unnecessary life-threatening situation in the first place. You're arguing that people should be deprived of the ability to defend themselves so that the police don't have to worry about the repercussions of trampling on their civil rights, and that somehow this will result in less trampling. Ban no-knock raids (which have dubious legality anyway) and situations like this wouldn't happen. Better yet, end the war on drugs altogether. Kenneth Walker keeps his right to self-defense, Breonna Taylor lives, no officer gets shot, the constitution remains unviolated, and nobody goes to jail for victimless crimes. Everybody wins. It is astounding to me that people argue "disarm Kenneth Walker so the police can fuck up his (wrong) house stress-free" is a better solution than that.
progval 6y ago
Alternative to 2: No one should have guns
- beervirus 6y ago
  A long as were in fantasy land, everyone should get unicorns too.

seankimdesign 6y ago

Care to elaborate? I get that gun control is indeed an issue worthy of its own debate, but how do you go from discussing police brutality to legally armed civilians being the root of evil?

mikeyouse 6y ago
Not OP - but the absurd prevalence of privately owned guns means that the police go into every interaction thinking that the person on the other side could be armed and could kill them on a whim. They're not even wrong about that. We have more privately owned guns than people of sufficient age to own them. The police in other countries can take a much more relaxed attitude toward their interactions with the public because there's almost no chance of the person shooting them.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > police go into every interaction thinking that the person on the other side could be armed and could kill them on a whim. They could be, but are very unlikely to be. Despite the huge number of privately guns owned in America, the vast majority of cops will never be shot at nor have valid reason to shoot at somebody. Cops who constantly fear for their lives are operating under a warped view of reality. I think it's a culture problem for cops. They hang out on cop forums, cop chat rooms or facebook groups; they read cop newsletters and generally socialize with other cops. These groups have the effect of amplifying stories about violence against cops, because those stories are sensational and of obvious interest to cops, and that amplification in turn gives rise to a warped perspective on how risky their job actually is.
jfk13 6y ago
If the country wasn't so awash with guns, perhaps the police might not be quite so nervous and trigger-happy.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

It's the fetishization of guns as an instrument of power that is the problem. Laws don't make people do bad things.

volkk 6y ago
right. its not like our second amendment even allows us to protect ourselves from incompetent/evil cops. it only allows for you to shoot other civilians and prey you're in the right. if you even dare try to defend yourself against some plainclothed cops, you'll simply be killed in a heartbeat, or now deal with courts for ages and most likely be charged with something.
- User23 6y ago
  This is categorically false. People can and have prevailed with a self-defense defense against killing police officers who failed to identify themselves as police. Also, Indiana for example explicitly legalizes home defense against "public servants"[1]. [1] https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-35-criminal-law-and-procedure/in-code-sect-35-41-3-2.html https://codes.findlaw.com/in/title-35-criminal-law-and-proce...
- kansface 6y ago
  2016 Man shoots three cops during no-knock raid and is found not guilty because they did not identify themselves as cops. https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-found-not-guilty-for-shooting-three-cops-during-noknock-raid-ehraX84ZEUi9Q0___1p4XA https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-government/texas-man-f...
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  You're allowed to defend yourself, with arms and lethal violence, against unlawful police. There's a Supreme Court case about it called John Bad Elk versus US wherein police were trying to arrest John Bad Elk for shooting guns on his own land, which was legal, and when the police made to draw on him he shot them, killing at least one officer, and was found to have acted within the law. A more recent and more famous example is the rapper Tupac who witnessed police beating up a guy for no reason. Tupac grabbed a gun and told them to stop, and when the police shot at him, he shot back wounding one, and wasn't found to have committed any crime. Randy Weaver shot and killed a federal agent and was exonerated at trial. These are just examples from memory. I'm sure if you looked you'd find many more. It may not be wise to shoot out with the police, and you'd better be certain you're right, but you're absolutely permitted to use your guns on the police and kill them in some circumstances.

briandear 6y ago

How? How many criminals are members of the NRA? The 2nd Amendment was created precisely as a counter to a tyrannical government. The ACLU fights over the first amendment, the NRA fights over the 2nd — and you can’t have one without the other. Both organizations are valuable. Free speech and free association is an illusion unless there is a means to back it up. If the UK tomorrow decided that everyone had to go to concentration camps, how exactly would that effort be opposed? One of Hilter’s earliest efforts was to disarm civilians. The Soviets also did the same thing. Now why would they do that? To stop gun violence? Of course not, it was to prevent rebellion. Imagine if the students in Tiananmen Square were heavily armed.