Posted on 08/16/2014 4:38:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
You can say that again. Heck, a lot of survivalist literature seems like one long drug-fueled daydream out of the fevered imaginations of Hollywood scriptwriters and science fiction authors, many of whom were known to partake quite liberally.
More bogus, physco-babble supporting a position held in high-esteem over at DU and inner cities across the nation.
Every little community in America has a SWAT or two, and they work with state and federal SWATs. It’s getting to where every thing is responded to by SWATs. Need divorce papers served? Get the SWATs to storm in on your spouse at 4 AM, kicking down the door, and blasting the house with teargas. Seriously, it’s just about come to that. We live in a de facto police state.
If criminals break into my house at night, they will meet my dogs and my gun, my son’s gun, and my wife’s gun, and they won’t leave happy. All American families should have a greeting plan for criminals. Only after they are dead should there be any reason for calling the police, and then we have to hope SWAT doesn’t break in, and kill us all by mistake.
The purpose of the police is to keep the peace & to protect & serve the RIGHTS of the citizens ,the purpose of the military is to KILL the ENEMIES OF THE NATION STATE & break their stuff .
When you try to use the military as police or militarize the police the citizenry become rightly or wrongly “ENEMIES OF THE STATE”. This is not a good thing as it leads to the viewing of any protest as attacks on the state & that any amount of violence is then justifies in response.
Blame the guns, not the murderer.
Blame the equipment, not the abuse of power.
Interesting take.
I would rather have the local police armed with military equipment than the IRS, Department of Agriculture, EPA, National Park Service, and other government agencies.
If one of these agencies has an issue, they should take it to court. If the court finds for the federal agency, they should issue an enforcement order to be carried out by the local law enforcement agency.
Waco or Ruby Ridge is much more likely with the heavy handed federal government involved.
Remember the individual states are sovereign. It is also good to have a well armed local law enforcement capability if the federal government misunderstands their charter.
It's time to move away from the Rambo model of policing, since crime is down anyway, and the heavily armed police don't seem to have any effect on the seriously dangerous gang-bangers (it's dangerous to go after them).
You seem to have a serious case of us-vs-them.
/johnny
PS. Few people at this forum, know personally what it is like to be stuck under the gun, with your freedom lost. Yet so many at this forum blab on about using more and more force.
*I know* what it is like, to be treated in a police state.
It is to your misfortune, that you wish for less and less of your sovereignty of the people, over governance and government.
So you support only the Feds having the right to have such potential force.
OK.
I support very few organizations having the right to it, strictly controlled and with specific criteria for how and where they can be employed. Seems like that should be a conservative principle, but apparently not for some.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.So the immoral liberals now have the government they wanted and deserved. They still will not leave off mischief or misbehavior, though, nor cease to complain.
—John Adams
The “militarization of police” is something that involves federal law enforcement in a big way, where I am concerned about its use against law abiding citizens.
This is also happening with local police fueled by federal taxpayers-national debt money since 9/11.
If local police want to use tear gas on looters and rioters, people who are actually breaking the law by stealing and attacking people en masse etc. I can accept that. If they want to use armored vehicles to deal with the snipers and firebomb throwers, that’s OK.
In Venezuela a few years ago, local police in communities that did not support Hugo Chavez and his communist regime had their shotguns and tactical weapons taken away from them by the national police force, the National Guard.
The local police were allowed to keep pistols, leaving them at a great disadvantage in dealing with criminal gangs and drug dealers. Crime skyrocketed in Venezuela.......
So you’ve been here for a decade and a half, yet you think I’m the author of this article?
And for our friends on the Left, what about the next time somebody goes into an elementary school armed with a Bushmaster and a couple of 9mm Glocks? You don’t want us arming the teachers or having local residents open carrying to keep the school grounds safe. “Leave it to the cops,” you say. But should the cops be going into a situation like that with nothing more than a layer of cotton uniform and a revolver to protect themselves and take down the bad guys? Or should they have to wait until a SWAT unit from an “appropriately large city” shows up, with the shooter mowing down third graders in the meantime?
Despite all that, neither the local beat cops NOR the SWAT arrived before the killing was finished and the shooter had taken his own life or walked away, out of ammo. This was true for Denver, for Tucson, Virginia Tech, Kileen, Texas, Columbine High School and a host of US Post Offices.
The citizen really is the best line of defense, and really the most likely savior of any active shooter situation.
When seconds count, the police ARE only minutes away.
Have you ever read a history book?
Even good men are destroyed by power. If you think that those employing excessive force will be constrained by morality or reason, you are to be pitied. Stalin’s useful idiots thought the same.
The marvel of our country was that it was founded on the understanding that all men are fallible and will succumb to evil. By limiting power and dispersing it between competing interests, the founders created a balance of power that was adequate for a moral society.
However, granting military power to police without the requisite separation of executive power, you create a monster without a head. Do you really want your mayor or chief of police deciding who lives or dies? How about the mayor from the nearest metropolis?
The warning against standing armies is as applicable today as 200 + years ago, though most people today don’t understand the gravity of that prejudice.
“The citizens DID have guns”
When did British citizen’s have guns?
Your community policing idea is an idea long supported by the left.
Hard to know how well it would work in the world of reality.
“I support very few organizations having the right to it,”
Which?
” strictly controlled”
Controlled by who or what?
” with specific criteria for how and where they can be employed. Seems like that should be a conservative principle, but apparently not for some.”
Who and how are the specific criteria determined?
It seems to me everything you spell out is what is all ready in effect.
Why should I care who supports the idea of community policing? It's the way policing was done in America until the early-mid 1900s.
/johnny
To save on space, which is why I provided the link to the source. Given that violent crime rates have more than doubled since the 60's, which was itself a violent era compared to the 50's, it's clear that crime isn't at its lowest point in the nation's history. What was crime in the 50's like? I haven't found any national data, but San Diego's numbers are a possible proxy:
| Year | Population | Murder | Rape | Robbery | Agg r. Assault |
Violent Crime |
Burglary | Larceny | Vehicle Theft |
Property Crime |
Index Total |
| 2013 | 1,326,238 | 0.03 | 0.24 | 1.10 | 2.63 | 4.00 | 4.79 | 14.50 | 4.63 | 23.92 | 27.92 |
| 2012 | 1,321,315 | 0.04 | 0.23 | 1.15 | 2.77 | 4.18 | 4.47 | 14.52 | 5.00 | 23.99 | 28.18 |
| 1951 | 396,000 | 0.03 | 0.00 | 0.21 | 0.16 | 0.40 | 1.99 | 10.95 | 2.85 | 15.79 | 16.19 |
| 1950 | 334,387 | 0.03 | 0.00 | 0.25 | 0.19 | 0.47 | 2.36 | 10.77 | 2.31 | 15.44 | 15.91 |
San Diego's stats attest to the fact that the 60's were a decade of rampant disorder, and it got far worse after that, peaking only in the 90's, three decades later. Even at today's diminished numbers vis-a-vis the 90's, San Diego's per capita violent crime rate is 8x what it was in 1950.
It's time to stop wasting money on stuff for gear-queers.
/johnny
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