Question pertaining the to the greater perceived threat

It is a rare occurrence on the part of myself to have sufficient reason to create a thread to introduce a new topic of discussion, rather than simply participating in a currently existing discussion. However the topic of discussion at hand warrants such.

Two specific schools of thought have been playing parallel for some time now, and it is necessary to address the both of them.

One school of thought is that firearms should not be freely available to private citizens in the manner that they currently are. There is the belief that firearms should be restricted to whatever significant degree is possible, subject to various requirements to make the ownership legal. Safety training, fingerprinting, registration, universal background checks for all transfers, total prohibitions on entire categories of firearms and accessories, confiscation under whatever basis, and a myriad of other standards. But most often the overwhelming element that runs between all of them is that the only ones who should have access to firearms are government agents, be it the military, law enforcement officers, or any number of others employed by the united states federal government. According to the school of thought, only government and those that work for it have the necessary level of training and skill to properly determine when deadly force is justified, and as such should be the only ones able to make such a determination.

The other school of thought at play has arisen recently as a result of various killings of minority individuals, such as Michael Brown. This school of thought is that law enforcement officers are nothing but poorly trained racists who are looking for whatever excuse to simply murder minority individuals. When a killing occurs, riots and civil unrest follow. Even when law enforcement officers are cleared of any wrongdoing in a court of law, the riots and civil unrest continue, because those doing such cannot accept the narrative that the killed individuals had done something sufficiently wrong enough to warrant being killed. Instead they claim that the dead individual did nothing wrong, that the entire justice system is corrupt, and that there is no such thing as justice because the officer got away with murder.

Two schools of thought, but only one of them can actually be maintained, as they run counter to one another.

Which school of thought do you belong to? Which do you consider to be the truth? Are law enforcement officers highly trained individuals whose judgement is better than that of anyone else, and thus they know what they are doing when they must deploy deadly force? Or are they nothing more than agents of a corrupt system where private individuals are denied justice, no matter how wrongly they have been mistreated?

Make your decision carefully. Are law enforcement officers trustworthy enough to be allowed sole access to firearms, and thus by extension they are correct in the killing minority individuals because it was warranted? Or are law enforcement officers, and by extension the court system itself, not trustworthy in determining when it is and is not appropriate to deploy deadly force, because they are inherently racist?

 

All the controversy about the police shooting people of color would hardly be an issue at all if guns were better controlled. Widespread gun ownership creates an atmosphere of fear and paranoia in which the police are afraid of being shot if they don't shoot first. In other countries like the UK the police don't have to worry about being shot by ordinary citizens so a lot fewer people end up getting killed by the police. In order to heal racial conflict, America must address its gun problem.

 

http://www.news.com.au/world/europe...o/news-story/29a4c0e203263c28555a44d439b2ef6e

 

Police will shoot people who fight with them, not "people of color." Those people just happen to be more at risk because of their lifestyle or because of where they live and what they are involved in.

 

I don't subscribe to either. firearms, law enforcement and military are necessary evils because of human nature. It is in the human behavioral spectrum to covet what others have and they do not. A firearm makes a less than powerful beta male, able to compete with a physically stronger alpha male. A firearm makes a woman the equal of any man...The best example is these young teenage gang members that group together and find strength in numbers. One man, no matter how strong, cannot defeat a dozen teenagers. Give that one man a firearm with good training and he stands a chance.

Humans are ultimately flawed. A firearm is simply a tool that can be misused.

 

Then you are stating that, as far as the use of deadly force is concerned, the judgement of law enforcement officers in the united states is no better than that of the general public? Their judgement on such is clouded and compromised by fear of fulfilling their line of employment? They kill members of the public because they are afraid, not necessarily because such action was actually needed or even warranted?

Is this the correct interpretation of the above?

Even if firearms could be more successfully restricted in the united states, which cannot be done, this would not result in any actual change in current practices. Current training which emphasizes law enforcement officers engage in the behavior they are demonstrating currently is not simply going to be revised to account for a perceived drop in the number of firearms in society. Every single encounter will have to be regarded as if the suspect is potentially armed, just as the case is presently in the united states, because they will have no way of knowing whether or not the person is actually armed.

Beyond such, it must be asked why law enforcement officers do not routinely kill any member of the general public that they find to be armed? Why does this apparent fear only apply in certain circumstance and situations, but not in others?

 

guns are a form of power. those who want as much power, as possible, concentrated in the hands of the government are almost always the same people who want gun control or gun bans

 

And yet when that power is utilized in a manner that is disagreed with, they claim government is racist and corrupt. They wish for government to have power and authority, but apparently only if that power and authourity is never actually used. Two separate messages, neither of which can be reconciled with the other. It is quite literally an and/or matter.

 

For those that possess the right to keep and bear arms, the exercise of same should be as simple and easy as the exercise of any other right; should a restriction laid upon one right violate the constitution, then so too should the same restriction laid on any other.

 

yep the people who most want to create a society where only government agents have legal firearms are the first to riot when a cop shoots someone under less than completely perfect circumstances.

 

Wow! When you make up facts about and stereotype people as "they," you do an excellent job! I wish I had your skill at putting people referred to as "they" in a neat box and assigning them imaginary characteristics that I make up and then convince myself they are true. However, I do not rise to that level of intelligence. When I make stuff up, I do not have the persuasive ability to even convince myself that it is true let alone others. SAD!

 

It does not warrant "such." The world would be a better place if you had not stepped out of your normal reticent personality and started this vapid thread.

 

The use of sarcasm has been noted. However it does nothing to change that both narratives are indeed being presented, and by those that align with a particular political ideology of belief.

Pray tell which currently ongoing topic of discussion would it have been appropriate to introduce the discussion of dueling liberal ideological narratives?

 

Huh? I can understand only the first sentence. As to the others, either I am losing my ability to read or the syntax is badly mangled.

 

The suggestion made by yourself, was that the world would be a better place, if the typical behavior engaged in by myself had not been altered, and the creation of a new topic of discussion was not engaged in.

If such is regarded as being the case, pray tell which currently ongoing topic of discussion would have been appropriate to select, for the purpose of introducing the dueling narratives for consideration and discussion. Which currently established topic was fit to be derailed by introduction of a new concept that had no relevance to what was being discussed prior to such?

 

If you would ask a question in understandable English, perhaps I could reply. As it is, I have no idea what you're writing.

 

America has no Gun problem.

Minorities run amock, they scream insanely at the Police when they get pulled over and often they don't have valid insurance or registration, then claim race is the main reason for being pulled over.

Almost seems as if those folks want the Police to shoost them.

 

LOL so you are totally abandoning the public safety façade for gun control and moving on to the hackneyed "race" issue, we need gun control to heal racial conflict

 

Yes, more Gun control to salve ancient slavery wounds and sooth the savage breast.
Give up the Gun !

 

With law enforcement, cops using deadly force is not even about true self defense, when cops "feel" threatened they shoot. They can get away with unnecessary deadly force because the entire law enforcement and judicial system will exonerate them no matter the actual threat and circumstances - cops are above the law.

 

Sure.
B.S. I was a Police Officer and your statement is false.
Retired, We can carry in any State.
Not shoot anyone on a whim or fancy.

 

Tell it to the many completely innocent people who are beaten, shot and/or murdered by cops. Aiyana Jones (5 years old), John Crawford, Christopher Roupe, Jose Guerena, Andrew Scott, Ismael Lopez, John Adams, just a few of the totally innocent murdered by cops.

The state attorney who investigated the John Crawford murder concluded Crawford was completely innocent, broke no law, was not at fault in any way, was just shopping in WalMart, was even the victim of a prank 911 call - but then decided the killer cop was innocent and would not be charged with anything. What do you think would happen if a normal person just walked up to Crawford and shot him dead?

And their fellow cops and the judicial system rallied around the murderous cops and do their best to keep them out of jail and in their cop job. And they usually succeed in voiding justice, except for the rare cases like Levar Edward Joneswho survived and the incident was caught on camera, the cop plead guilty 3 years later to assault and battery.

Did you catch that? Assault and battery, meaning the cop didn't shoot and attempt to kill the innocent man, merely threatened and made physical contact with the victim. Let a normal person pull out a gun and shoot a totally innocent stranger because he thought the victim was going to get a weapon - what do you think will happen?

 

Lol. If the cops see a black person, they just shoot em up because all cops are racists and hate black people, so they just murder them without any justification . . . . and that is how liberals think apparently, as unbelievably stupid as that is.

 

The cops are allowed to do that because they are responsible for public safety. That is a part of their jobs. Not to say there aren't some bad cops, and I'm sure there are some people who join the force just for the "authority." However, that does not describe all cops or even most cops.

 

I think the police could definitely use some better training and perhaps a longer time at police academy so that they can be better prepared for what they will be facing on the streets (especially if they will be working a high crime area).