How would heavily armed citizenry help solve the problem? Are you going to put a hole in the head of the officer who takes your cash out of your car? Won't that lead to anarchy or civil war, eventually? Maybe...consider changing the law, eh?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I would say based on the declaration of independence, if it comes to that the answer is yes.
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.
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.