Today's JPFO Alert notes that to ostensibly "conservative" David Frum, police state apologist extraordinaire, we the people of a supposedly free country are "the policed."
Actually, I cannot remember seeing any objections to police wearing body armor, and would only harbor such objections myself if efforts to ban possession of body armor by private citizens were to gain ground. More importantly, look at Frum's term for private citizens: "the
policed." To Frum's way of thinking, apparently, that is how we the people are to be defined: as those who are kept in line by the government's hired muscle.
And as always, if you haven't seen all the great JPFO Alerts written by David, Nicki, Claire, and Mama Liberty, you owe it to yourself to fix that.
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1 comments:
The attitudes toward gun control and law enforcement have always been a paradox. On both sides.
Most pro-gun people are hard-liners on crime, and they are usually pro-cop. But they still believe that private citizens need weapons in case an armed revolution against the government becomes necessary. They therefore don't want the government to have a monopoly on force.
Leftists want more government control and regulation over people. And they want to disarm all civilians. But they also hate and distrust the police, and consider them all to be brutal racists who go around shooting innocent black children for fun.
For years, liberals/progressives opposed any attempts to upgrade police equipment, especially weapons. They were against cops having "inhumane" hollow-point bullets, or automatic pistols, or "assault rifles," or pump-action shotguns. Some even opposed body armor, tear gas, and Tasers.
And, whenever a mugger resisted arrest and a cop twisted his arm to make him submit, or when a carjacker got shot in a gunfight with police, liberals would scream about "brutality" and "excessive force," and would demand that the officer be prosecuted for violating the poor baby's civil rights. And the criminal would be portrayed in the media as a harmless child.
Now, though, we see the same kind of knee-jerk reaction from both the right and the left. Pro-gun bloggers decry the "militarization of law enforcement." And they, like the bleeding heart liberals, keep repeating the mantra, "unarmed teen," to describe the "victim" in Ferguson.
Michael Brown was 6'4" and almost 300 pounds. He was 18, legally an adult. The cop stopped him for jaywalking, and Brown attacked the cop, seriously injuring him. And, minutes earlier, Brown had robbed a convenience store and roughed up the clerk.
The AP handbook instructs reporters to use the term "youth" for someone 13-17 years old, and "man" or "woman" for persons 18 or older. But the media have repeatedly referred to Brown as a "teen," an "unarmed teen," and even as a "boy" and a "child."
But then, these are the same people who repeatedly showed a photo of Trayvon Martin taken when he was twelve years old next to the ugliest photo (a mug shot) of George Zimmerman that they could find.
Re: armored vehicles, police demand for them went up after the North Hollywood gunfight, after LAPD had to borrow an armored truck from a private security company to rescue some of the victims.
Should police use APC's for routine patrol? No. Should S.W.A.T. teams be deployed to serve a warrant for an unpaid traffic ticket? No. Should state and local police have equipment for emergencies, including riots and terrorist attacks? IMHO, yes.
That said, David Frum is an idiot. Police don't need armor and automatic weapons because of peaceable, honest citizens who legally own AR-15's and 16-shot 9mm pistols. Police and honest citizens need armor and firepower because of violent criminals and terrorists (who are wandering about loose on our streets because of the leftists' policies: a revolving door legal system, a revolving door psychiatric system, and a lax immigration policy).
If anything, the riot in Ferguson (and in L.A. in the early 1990's) prove the need for police and private citizens to have so-called "military high-capacity assault weapons."
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