4 ms·

Do you have a choice? Either water down the second amendment and disarm the population or give the police what they need. I am not taking a side, simply stating

Do you have a choice? Either water down the second amendment and disarm the population or give the police what they need. I am not taking a side, simply stating the dilemna of law enforcement.

henriquez 6y ago
Watering down the second amendment would work to the extent that people wielding the guns were behaving lawfully in the first place, which is not relevant when we’re taking about armed confrontations with police. I have yet to see any statistics showing that militarizing the police makes them any more effective or safe.
- petre 6y ago
  The obvious solution is to tax ammo proportinal to its military use. You want military grade armor piercing rounds to shoot tin cans at your birthday party? Fine, that's taxed 1000%. Normal 9 mm rounds suitable for handguns should obviously be taxed lower. It doesn't ban firearms, it just creates a supply problem for nutcakes and preppers buiding arsenals. Security companies and firing ranges could recover their ammo tax at the end of the fiscal year. Hobbists could shoot assault rifles at firing ranges, as opposed to their back yard. The police won't need surplus military gear then. Your neighbour won't be wounded from a stray bullet shot from an assault rifle ten buildings away.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    I think you guys have laws forbid civilian possession of military AP rounds in the US.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
tertiary 6y ago
> Either water down the second amendment ... or give the police what they need That's a false dichotomy and misses the main point of the argument to reduce police militarization. Nobody is upset when SWAT responds to a school shooting or a terrorist act. The problem (I suppose a really good problem to have after all) is that those things almost never happen, even though they are the ones we see on the news and can quickly retrieve in our minds. You're more likely to die in a plane crash than in a terrorist act in the US. That begs the question: if militarized units don't have enough violent crime to respond to, but are still a full time unit then what do they respond to? The answer is why people are upset and it's because we are sending them to respond to drug offenses and to execute search warrants instead. Situations thay they inevitably end up escalating (on average) and killing people in. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168017712885 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680177128...
- craftinator 6y ago
  New Zealand just went through an interesting experiment; they armed some of their police as a trial run, then got feedback from the community that that armed unit served. The majority response was that while people understood WHY the police were armed, they didn't want armed police doing things like traffic stops, responding to domestic disputes, etc.., because their mere presence was threatening.
craftinator 6y ago
Yes, there's a choice. Again, the police don't need military gear. You keep talking about what everyone "needs" in your posts; what the police "need" is fewer opportunities to be assholes. The police need to be trained in how to de-escalate; they need to be trained not to "dominate" every situation they're involved in. The need to be demilitarized, and SWAT units need to be expanded slightly to deal with the small number of cases every year that demand real firepower.

Do you have a choice? Either water down the second amendment and disarm the population or give the police what they need. I am not taking a side, simply stating the dilemna of law enforcement.

henriquez 6y ago

Watering down the second amendment would work to the extent that people wielding the guns were behaving lawfully in the first place, which is not relevant when we’re taking about armed confrontations with police. I have yet to see any statistics showing that militarizing the police makes them any more effective or safe.

petre 6y ago
The obvious solution is to tax ammo proportinal to its military use. You want military grade armor piercing rounds to shoot tin cans at your birthday party? Fine, that's taxed 1000%. Normal 9 mm rounds suitable for handguns should obviously be taxed lower. It doesn't ban firearms, it just creates a supply problem for nutcakes and preppers buiding arsenals. Security companies and firing ranges could recover their ammo tax at the end of the fiscal year. Hobbists could shoot assault rifles at firing ranges, as opposed to their back yard. The police won't need surplus military gear then. Your neighbour won't be wounded from a stray bullet shot from an assault rifle ten buildings away.
- numpad0 6y ago
  I think you guys have laws forbid civilian possession of military AP rounds in the US.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

tertiary 6y ago

> Either water down the second amendment ... or give the police what they need That's a false dichotomy and misses the main point of the argument to reduce police militarization. Nobody is upset when SWAT responds to a school shooting or a terrorist act. The problem (I suppose a really good problem to have after all) is that those things almost never happen, even though they are the ones we see on the news and can quickly retrieve in our minds. You're more likely to die in a plane crash than in a terrorist act in the US. That begs the question: if militarized units don't have enough violent crime to respond to, but are still a full time unit then what do they respond to? The answer is why people are upset and it's because we are sending them to respond to drug offenses and to execute search warrants instead. Situations thay they inevitably end up escalating (on average) and killing people in. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168017712885 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680177128...

craftinator 6y ago
New Zealand just went through an interesting experiment; they armed some of their police as a trial run, then got feedback from the community that that armed unit served. The majority response was that while people understood WHY the police were armed, they didn't want armed police doing things like traffic stops, responding to domestic disputes, etc.., because their mere presence was threatening.

craftinator 6y ago

Yes, there's a choice. Again, the police don't need military gear. You keep talking about what everyone "needs" in your posts; what the police "need" is fewer opportunities to be assholes. The police need to be trained in how to de-escalate; they need to be trained not to "dominate" every situation they're involved in. The need to be demilitarized, and SWAT units need to be expanded slightly to deal with the small number of cases every year that demand real firepower.