And therein lies the main problem with all of this "abolish the police" bullshit. It's driven mainly by upper middle class whites who live in low crime areas an

And therein lies the main problem with all of this "abolish the police" bullshit. It's driven mainly by upper middle class whites who live in low crime areas and rarely if ever need police, and think everyone is the same way. Watch the protest videos carefully - there are hardly any black people there in a lot of cases. In fact last night I counted more high end bicycles in a protest video than black people. It's a common occurrence nowadays to see a self-righteous 20 year old trust fund kid "educate" a black police officer on how to be black. This is utterly idiotic. I interacted with the police exactly 3 times in 20 years I lived in my neighborhood. Once I got a ticket for the missing front license plate on my car (deservedly so, paid the fine). Once my mailbox was broken into, and a police officer stopped by to ask questions and see if I'd press charges if they found the thief (of course I would, but they never found the guy), and once I had to call police on a neighbor who thought it'd be a wonderful idea to blast music at full volume at 2AM in the middle of the work week. That's the extent of it. There's no crime in my neighborhood, violent or otherwise, by any meaningful metric. If I thought all neighborhoods were like this, of course I'd be in favor of simultaneously defunding police and abolishing the second amendment. Having seen total lawlessness first hand during the "wild 90's" in Russia, I don't have such illusions. I once saw a dude on his knees with a gun pointed at his forehead within 200m of the Red Square, with police officers watching but not intervening in the proceedings, probably because the mobster with the gun was above their pay grade. Don't know if the guy got shot or not, I couldn't do anything anyway, so I entered the nearby subway station and went home, but the image seared into my mind. Remember, this was in the very center of a large city. You can imagine what kinds of crazy shit went on on the outskirts. People in South Chicago or in the bad parts of NY have no such illusions either. That's why I support _gradual_ police reform and increased funding (you can't, as a rule, get better service by paying less), have a safe full of guns and ammo, and will vote strenuously against any politician, irrespective of party affiliation or just about any other views, who tries to "defund" the police or restrict 2A. I fail to see how such measures would be in anyone's longer term interest.