In the US, where the constitution expressly prohibits it: that your property is seized w/o due process is complete and utter garbage.
By no means am I a right-wing/vigilante militia supporter, but this type of behavior from the police makes me support having a heavily armed citizenry.
Second, the statement above didn't say much about requiring a warrant to take people's property - how do you get to USA v2, where that law is in place? Do you shoot enough cops, so they would change the law? What kind of wild-west mentality dwells around there, anyway? How about writing a petition? How about sending (e)mails to your congressmen, or whatever people with that kind of authority you have in US?
Sure, why not? Most cops don't train that much with their weapons, and there's a bunch of crazy rednecks out there who train constantly with various firearms. I'll put my money on the gun nuts against the cops. Check out some YouTube videos by guys at pistol ranges. Also, cops only train at standard ranges, where you stand still and shoot at a non-moving target, and don't generally do combat training. Face it, cops aren't soldiers; they're just thugs with guns, and most are about as skilled with guns as your average ghetto thug.
As for your bet - the paradigm would shift from bullying all people to bullying frail people and avoid rednecks, as far as the violent cops go. This would hardly solve the problem.
Most cops only train with their pistols once or twice a year.
No, they're not breaking the law. They're just taking advantage of laws your elected officials wrote.
So if you want to stop the cops from stealing from you, get your elected official to change the law, or threaten to _vote_ him/her out of office.
That's how it's supposed to be, but citizens keep voting the same politicians into office that vote against their interests.
Clinton caused some of these tough on crime and drugs laws. So if you voted for his party (Obama), then you voted for this.
All the politicians do is stir up emotional issues like "they're trying to take away your guns", or abortion, to distract the sheep. It works all the time.
In this case, we have the big media, big industry, and big government in a huge orgy of bribery and self-interest, that all benefit from people accepting authoritarianism. There’s a relief valve, a small minority of people getting their political analysis from Comedy Central or their security analysis from Bruce Schneier, but the vast majority get their talking points from people who are funded to act like there is still a debate about climate change.
It’s not technically against our will, but our will has been manipulated.
The smartphone example does not fit.
Very few needed to be manipulated into buying one. You've got to have a phone, whether it's a smartphone, a feature phone, or even a land line phone. Unless extraneous circumstances dictate otherwise, a phone is a necessity.
In a sense it was forced upon us. You see, we were whipped into a frenzy where the most likely thing to do, given our emotional states, was support whatever the perpetrators wanted in the first place.
It's a trick that works all the time.
It's almost as if the voting process itself is part of the system, rather than being separate somehow? If we examined that process as a part of that system, we might conclude that it always produces the same results for durable structural reasons rather than because voters always fuck up in special contingent ways.
Sadly, the supreme court is stacked with nutjobs from both sides so issues like this are ignored.
No, there isn't. The Constitution is a part of the law (and a part that constrains whether other things that purport to be law actually are.) Violating the Constitution is violating the law.
Yes, hopefully (though hopefully not at the scale you may be imagining). Cops have turned into thugs in this country and something needs to be done about it. Maybe legalizing drugs would fix everything. I don't know. But cops in this country aren't even accountable for the people that they kill. There are no logs on how many murders are carried out by police.
Yes, they can take our property, including cash, for no reason (something like 90% of dollar bills test positive for traces of cocaine). And in this case all the officers had to do was say they smelled weed. I have been a victim of this "smell like weed" abuse myself, in which everyone in my vehicle was pulled out and searched. My vehicle was then searched without my permission. They found nothing and gave me a speeding ticket for going 5 miles over the speed limit.
But seizing our property means nothing when they can take our lives without the public knowing about it.
That's not very helpful if the people enforcing (and writing) the law are the ones who are breaking it.
>Won't that lead to civil war, eventually?
That's the idea! Or hopefully not even that, since many servicemen will revolt as well.
There would likely also be a presumption, as a heavily armed white person, that you're extremely confident in your ability to recite the constitution, quite possibly spoiling for a fight to defend particular rights that you see enshrined in the constitution, that you will not submit to a warrantless search, and are even less likely to allow the police to steal your money.
You don't need to put holes in the police officers, they would profile you from a mile off and assume you're a red-neck nutbag who is potentially going to put holes in them, move along citizen there's nothing to see here.
The situation in Oregon is larger than just this single incident. I recommend reading the report[1] put together by the SPLC on the previous incidents.
Page 9 of the report has photos of these militia scofflaws pointing rifles at federal and local law enforcement[2]. That show of force did get law enforcement to back off at the time. As for why the people involved still haven't been charged with - at a minimum - assault with a deadly weapon is another matter entirely that really needs to be remedied before those militia nutjobs escalate their tactics into a a reenactment of the Whiskey Rebellion..
When you strip away the usual political rhetoric an other distractions, the primary reason the Oregon stand-off didn't turn into a (possibly Waco-style) raid immediately is because the militia members are both white and conservative. We saw what happened to unarmed non-conservatives when the police started using CS gas on various Occupy Wall Street groups (e.g. the battles in Oakland). If the militia members were black or Muslim, the media would be calling them "terrorists" and the swat teams would have gone in shooting within the first day or two.
[1] https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_file...
[2] http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2014/04/RTR3L...
I don't believe that for a second. The government certainly didn't hold back at Waco or Ruby Ridge.
I should have included "mainstream xian" in that list.
> didn't hold back
I don't mean to imply that it's a perfect shield. There are numerous cases where the government has gone after more or less every subgroup. The point is that framing affects how people perceive a situation, which in turn affects how they respond.
What framing? Just look at the media. An example from today:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-oregon-mil...
"The armed activists occupying a national wildlife refuge ..."
^^^^^^^^^
"... took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to protest ..."
^^^^^^^Yes, I do. Are you seriously going to pretend the press is more sympathetic to Christians?
I am as much intolerant of Muslims as anyone (PC be damned) but I don't think we have a leg to stand on here.
Remember Obama's remark about people "clinging to their guns and religion"? That's pretty insulting if you're a Christian (or a gun owner). He was still elected president. Twice.
Sure, numerically speaking there are a lot of Christians in the US. But they're not a majority and they don't control any part of the press, academia, or the government. The people running the executive branch (including Obama) are downright hostile to both whites and Christians.
Come springtime if those guys are still there ATF or the FBI will take the gloves off.
I hate this fear you've succumbed to because I'm afraid it will be a self-fulfilling prophesy. We are destroying ourselves. Fear hurts us because it makes us follow lunatics and insincere people like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.
We need to take a step back and stop listening to fear mongerers. Of course, our work never ends. Of course, we need to push back to defend our rights. However, I don't see us pushing back. When we support antics like occupying a park office, we are not reaching out. We are withdrawing further. We are showing that we are afraid. Some dude not getting to graze his cattle in federal land is not a constitutional crisis much less a moral or religious one.
I equate it to me going to the NSA and demanding them that I be given a free vps on their servers. I mean clearly my taxes paid for the data centers...
I guess my point is if we stopped fearing and withdrawing into ourselves but rather tries to reach out then we will find a lot of the others will see what we really want isn't bad. However, we must discard the craziness and the insincerity. I think it will be a little easier to do that if we stop being afraid.
You're reading something into my post that isn't there. What in the world are you talking about?
Some officers are starting to embrace drug legalization too. This apparent upsurge in libertarian views among cops is almost enough to make me consider becoming a libertarian again. Cops adopt these stances because they think it makes their lives easier and safer. A stressed fearful cop is like a cornered animal: far more likely to lash out. So, more relaxed police = less police violence, better relations between the police and the citizenry.
For instance, people here in the US say particular generalizations about "the Europeans" all the time, but there's a world of difference between the cultures of Spain, England, Sweden, Latvia, Greece, and Moldova (and Russia, which is part of Europe geographically).
So when you say some police chiefs like armed citizens, I really wonder where those chiefs are. I'm willing to bet good money the chiefs of NYPD, Chicago PD, LAPD, etc. are not among those chiefs. However, I can certainly see some police chief in some pop. 30k city being like that; I can also see the police in a random small city like that not having any real problems with police misbehavior; we're likely judging ALL police nationwide for actions of a lot of police who seem to mostly be in cities. Are the cops in rural North Dakota known by the people there to shoot unarmed people or beat people or steal from them?
Note also that I'm not claiming that it's only a small number of police that are bad cops; I think it varies by jurisdiction, and I think they stick up for each other and that a few obviously bad ones in a department probably indicate the entire department is bad (much like the old saying, "one bad apple spoils the entire bunch"). But not all police departments are the same, and again it seems we usually hear about problems in cities.
Another is a former Cincinnati chief.
I dunno, make up your own mind.
And I was certainly not blaming all cops for police violence committed in the inner cities. The evidence we have to date suggests a pattern consistent with my statements that stressed out police officers who expect shit to go down at any minute are more likely to react with excessive violence. That's far more likely to be the situation in a major city. Police in rural and low-density areas are less likely to react this way.
I would say based on the declaration of independence, if it comes to that the answer is yes.
As for leading to anarchy (let's save discussing whether that would be a good thing for another time) or civil war, I don't see why it would.
> It's because the cops would be afraid that if they rob someone they will be met with a violent response, as they well should.
The cops already are afraid that if they exercise seizure or arrest powers they will be met with a violent response, and conduct such operations based on the assumption of a violent response (often with tragic results.)
This manifestly does not prevent them from executing these powers.
Do you mind elaborate how firearm would help with combating civil forfeiture?
EDIT: To the multitude of downvoters and angry replies: I didn't say I agreed! I'm just saying where these arguments usually logically end up.
Once again, I'm not proposing this. I'm answering a question with the honest logical conclusion that some peoples' worldviews take them to.
What other choice would the population have than to defend themselves against that kind of extreme assault on their liberty and property by what would be an obviously hostile, violent and radically unconstitutional force? The police would become little more than armed bandits at that point, modern pirates. It seems like an outlandish scenario to me, but it may not be if the police asset theft continues to soar as it has been. How about if it's ten times larger ten years from now? Latin America has had plenty of this going on, scenarios where the police have become bandits that plunder the population in numerous ways.
Maybe instead of buying guns we should invest more of our time and resources into the political process.
[EDIT:] In case I wasn't clear, I'm saying:
civil forfeiture -> armed populace
armed populace -> less civil forfeitureThat seems contrary to evidence, surely. Looking at stats for residential shootings:
"For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides."
Don't even get me started on how suicide has been redefined as pathological, as if nothing in this shitty world could ever lead a rational person to take her own life.
If these researchers cared about public health they would have helped us end the damned drug war a decade ago. As if.
> I note that any incident that involves a gun is assumed to be caused by the gun, as though no unarmed person ever were assaulted or committed suicide. That tells me everything I need to know about how conscientious the research is.
Yes, they're looking at correlation rather than causation, but looking at real world data that's usually your only option. Dismissing the research on as not 'conscientious' on that basis seems a little weak, perhaps you'd care to support it some?
> If these researchers cared about public health they would have helped us end the damned drug war a decade ago. As if.
This is entirely fallacious... the world doesn't conform to your "if X really cared about Y they would have done Z" narrative. By that same argument no president, no congress, and nobody who approves of the war on drugs, cares about human life.
Edit:
If you prefer not to talk about suicide; how about self-defence... in 2014 (according to FBI data) there were 229 cases (total) where a criminal was justifiably killed by a civilian [1]. To put that in perspective there were 281 mass shootings in 2014... 1,759 people were killed by firearms during arguments [2]... and 1,601 injured in gun-related accidents.
Similarly this study [3] found that carrying a gun increased your chance of being shot by a factor of 4.5.
The whole "armed citizens don't need police" thing may actually be fair... but you're much more likely to need an ambulance.
[1] https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/...
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/...
[3] http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2008.1...
Gee, thanks!
Ah yes, we must look under the lamppost. Sure, that's a pressing concern for "professional" "researchers" who must write grants somehow, but that doesn't oblige the rest of us to believe their tenuous constructed bullshit. Correlation might make sense, ceteris paribus, but they're comparing USA to nations of vastly different sizes, locations, and histories. Rather than, say, nations of similar sizes, locations, and histories. We are a high-population colonized nation of the Americas. We're not the only one, but we are the only one that shows up in this "research".
By that same argument...
Indeed. Normal voters have ignorance as an excuse (although that's less tenable as time passes) but every single legislator and drug warrior and surely every social scientist eventually figures out what's going on. Cops still don't join LEAP until they get their pension. Researchers continue to write grants that get funded rather than ask questions that data can possibly answer.
Police don't exist to stop the lone burglar from sneaking into your house. They exist to stop the gang of armed men driving up to your house in a bus.[1] Even small groups of organized and armed criminals can terrorize a large population, armed or not. Police exist to make it unfeasible for such groups to operate in the open.
[1] This actually happened to me, in Bangladesh.
Were there any firearms in the house that was robbed? In that neighborhood, would criminals expect the average resident to be armed?
It becomes dangerous when that small group becomes tainted by religion, as was the case with characters like Dawood Ibrahim.
Why is violence an effective means of coercion by the common citizen, but an unacceptable means of coercion by the state? Surely, if fearing for their lives would keep the police honest, having the people fear for their lives would keep them honest and law abiding as well?
Civil forfeiture was a highly successful tool to combat organized crime and grew enormously in the 80s with Reagan's odious war on drugs. It basically solves the problem of illicitly used money being able to free people the government wanted wanted to stop.
As a tool for dismantling organized crime, it was effective, useful, and generally seemed basically fair and as such seemed to survive court review.
Then came the war on drugs and a dose of right-wing anti-tax thinking.
"It's now possible for a drug dealer to serve time in a forfeiture-financed prison after being arrested by agents driving a forfeiture-provided automobile while working in a forfeiture-funded sting operation." — Reagan attorney general Richard Thornburgh in 1989.
It was specifically designed to help fund agencies in a way that replaced tax revenue. Starting at roughly this same time period most government agencies at all levels became cash-strapped in various ways. This meant some agencies have turned to civil forfeiture to create revenue.
It's clearly a bad incentive and needs to be reined in and reformulated to ensure rights are being respected.
BTW, a heavily armed citizenry is precisely why local police departments advocate for more and more militarized equipment. They'll call them gang members and drug dealers, but they are heavily armed citizenry nonetheless. Armed citizens won't solve any part of this problem.
You can't simply drop an atomic bomb on NYC -- and justify it, by saying you killed at least 100,000 criminals ...
Guns have obviously led to killing innocents by police, and I'd like that number to go down. Heck, I'd like most police officers to not carry guns most of the time, leaving guns to SWAT teams that can be called in when needed. In other words, I want the dangerous tool used effectively in a manner that respects everyone's rights.
Same with civil forfeiture. It's clearly being used in an abusive fashion. Innocents are losing money and property to help pay for police. It blows my mind that it's being used this way and needs to be reformed. To me it would make sense to hold the property in some form of escrow until the finding of guilt or innocence, essentially freezing assets.
I don't know, if cf can be reformed, so that it stays useful and has not such by-effects. The usefulness of cf is largely drawn from the aspect of being arbitrary.
The side effect of a constitutional state is, that some times the bad guys can use it to protect their bad ways. But the alternative would be bad for all.
cf does not only make innocent people to victims, but does change those to crooks, that should protect the innocent -- and thus an even bigger harm is done to the whole society -- with very bad consequences in the long run!
"While the 1993 Supreme Court case Austin v. United States ruled that a forfeiture could be considered as an excessive fine, the court upheld the principle of civil forfeiture generally. A 1996 Supreme Court decision ruled that prosecuting a person for a crime and seizing his or her property via civil forfeiture did not constitute double jeopardy, and therefore did not violate the Constitution. However, in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that civil forfeiture was not permitted if the amount seized was "grossly disproportional" to the gravity of the offense."
It seems the current legal interpretations do not support considering double-dipping like this to be unconstitutional. However, it's also clear that it should be able to be argued that due process is not being followed, and the dollar value of punishment is excessive, which seems to be ACLU's stance on the matter. I hope the unconstitutional elements are removed from this tool sooner rather than later.
Seems pretty mindbogglingly clear to me. Regardless of what the present Justice Department refuses to go after, or what the present Supreme Courts choose to go after, the people practicing these policies are corrupt traitors committing literal armed robbery in defiance of their compact with the People. That sounds like a hyperbolic statement, but it's not.
I'm going to borrow xkcd's analogy at https://xkcd.com/463/
Imagine you're at a parent-teacher conference, and the teacher, out of the blue, assures you that while he doesn't wear a condom while teaching, all his STD testing is up to date and meets the state code as presently written; He has been inspected by the principal for venereal diseases on a weekly basis. He's clean, and your children are safe, no matter what their marks on the upcoming math test happen to be.
If you're going to say something is successful, be clear about it. Yes, it has been successful at locking up more people than any country in the world. Yes, it has been successful at seizing tons of property. No it hasn't been successful at putting any sort of dent into organized crime, which is fueled by the gigantic black market of drugs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Crime_Control_...
you can largely thank Ronald Reagan and his
handlers for this legislation
This practice simply is breaking the civil pact that holds together our countries.
This sort of thing is why "I have nothing to hide" is not a legitimate justification for mass surveillance. Think of the abuse potential when dragnet surveillance is combined with machine learning and economic incentives for asset seizure. I can think of quite a few... umm... entrepreneurial things that might be done.
But, the counterexample to your narrative are the various militias that are slightly racist and espouse right-wing rhetoric.
Sometimes adults like to dress up in black shirts and carry weapons around, regardless of what political affiliation they have.
That people seriously consider more guns to be a solution to anything let alone this problem shows the profound level of insane indoctrination and delusion in the country more than anything else.
I'm going to jot that sentence down in my "how to make friends and influence people" notebook.
Is there some possibility of convincing a gun rights advocate that he is wrong? Only as much as there is to convince a climate change denier or creationist they are wrong. So for all three I'm afraid the above adjectives are accurate.
I am only guilty of the sin of posting ridicule rather than psychotherapy.
When you use that kind of rhetoric there's no possibility of common ground. People who believe in gun rights, as I do, used to be much more open to restrictions on the margins - things like magazine size restrictions, say, or background checks.
But there's no better way to engender intransigence than to ridicule someone without even attempting state your own position. Given the shift in public opinion toward gun rights, you're really just marginalizing yourself and your co-restrictionists.
If two generations of discourse has had no effect then certainly nothing I could ever post will change even one member of that 1% any more than I could change a creationist's view which has been demonstrably invalid 150 years now.
But I might challenge a gun advocate's consistency this way though: why not establish a charity to hand out guns to poor inner city kids so as to reduce crime in those areas or at least give them too the opportunity to exercise that alleged fundamental human right; gun ownership?
Conversely, the decreased availability of firearms doesn't reduce violence either.
Turns out there are no hard links one-way or the other. Crime rates correlate strongly with poverty rates.
Well that's good for the police because now they have good reason to roll in with their SWAT wagon and get the "tactical" gear out and play GI Joe.