Guns aren't a problem. The problem is bad guys with guns. A cop is a bad guy with a gun. A public nuisance. A threat to you.
In fact, you can forget about guns altogether. Bad guys are a problem. Guns are an effective way to handle bad guys, whether the bad guys have guns or not. No decent person will ever do anything to stand between good people and their guns. If someone is trying to make it harder for anyone to own and to carry guns, no matter their justification, they are not a good person. Any rule aimed at making it harder for bad guys to get a gun will affect good guys more. Good guys have a silly desire to obey even unethical rules; bad guys don't.
When anti-gun bigots go on and on about "kids and guns" not going together, they are focusing on the wrong people. Cops and guns don't go together. Cops aren't going to give up their guns, so the rest of us don't dare give up ours.
Kids and guns need to go together a lot more than they are encouraged to do so in today's society.
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I am of the opinion that if we decidewe need cops (I don't think that we do), that they should do there assigned tasks unarmed. If an arrest is neccessary, they can form a posse of citizens to help them. The citizens may be armed as is their desire, but the cop remains unarmed. The arrest documentation would reflect the assitance of the posse members but the disclosure of their identity would be at their option. This would keep the power trippers in the force at bay, as they never be in a position to apply undo force.
ReplyDeleteJeff2
As I remember, that's the way it was originally supposed to work. Didn't take long for the power of "authority" to flip the real power, though.
DeleteAlso, if cops are "needed" (a ridiculous assertion, at best) they should stay in the office eating donuts until specifically called for.
“Kids and guns need to go together a lot more than they are encouraged to do so in today's society.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with this. It is the ‘forbidden fruit’ aspect of the social attitude towards firearms in modern American culture that is responsible for most of the non-intended harm that is experienced by children encountering weapons that they have had pictured and described as mysteriously and ‘magically’ dangerous things rather than merely tools that must be treated appropriately and with respect and skill not carelessly and sloppily as toys. That lack of training, education and familiarity is the source of the problem, not the tool.
I've said the same thing many times. Here's one example from 2010: https://kentmcmanigal.blogspot.com/2010/04/boy-shoots-self-authorities-advice-if.html
DeleteThanks for the link, that was an excellent article. On a different topic but a nevertheless related subject, this cognitive disconnect from the real problem occurs in modern American society with the treatment of alcohol and children also. I believe; and this is corroborated by the experience in European cultures where wine is a part of natural cuisine, that allowing kids to have a taste at meals and sharing in the adult behavior in their presence contributes to a diminishing of that ‘forbidden fruit’ syndrome and is more likely to preclude the rebellious excesses of binge drinking and over indulgence by those whose first experience of use occurs on their own or in the company of peers with its predictable rush to adopt (so-called) ‘grownup’ behaviors.
DeleteI had a friend from Germany several years ago and she thought the American age limit on alcohol consumption was ridiculous and made people more likely to drink irresponsibly. She said as a kid she always had beer with meals. It was nothing unusual. She was 21 and a college student far from home, and still had no desire to binge drink like so many of the American students did. I never saw her drunk or even buzzed. Alcohol just wasn't a big deal to her either way.
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