Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

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Actually it's not contradictory at all, it makes sense.

Whenever I visit America I'm astonished at how outrageous and uncivil some people behave. They really do want to press their freedom against the rights of others.

Carrying guns is the best example - it's an obvious 'freedom' that massively complicated policing and everything else.

Police in the US are rightly very afraid when pulling over someone for something petty like speeding because that person could be upset and have a gun. Where I'm from cops are not afraid because nobody has guns.

The woman who defied 'stay at home orders' - how do you deal with that as a cop? She just wants to cut hair to make money to stay alive, but you have to arrest her, which could lead to a confrontation with her and her 'supporters with guns'.

An ideology of 'land of the free' will necessarily have excessive conflict at the margins where said freedoms interdict with the ostensible freedoms of others and you have law enforcement in the middle trying to sort it out in sometimes ambiguous situations.

> Police in the US are rightly very afraid when pulling over someone for something petty like speeding because that person could be upset and have a gun. Where I'm from cops are not afraid because nobody has guns.

this sort of begs the question of why direct, in-person confrontation is even necessary for petty offenses. there's always a risk that such an interaction could go south, whether or not guns are involved. to write a ticket, all the cop has to do is record the measured speed and identify the vehicle and driver. with the tools available in 2020, they should be able to do this without stopping the person to ask for their license and registration. save the confrontations and arrests for when the person clearly poses an imminent threat to those around them.

> with the tools available in 2020, they should be able to do this without stopping the person to ask for their license and registration.

What tools would those be? Specifically how do you positively identify the driver without checking their ID?

take a picture of the driver and compare against ID photos later? for most vehicles, the set of possible drivers on a particular day is not large. it doesn't have to be perfect, just enough to make the charge stick a good chunk of the time.

You make the owner responsible. I.e. if the driver can be identified (or the owner identifies the driver) then you can fine the driver, otherwise you fine the owner.

Civilized people have absolutely no problem getting pulled over for speeding or whatever. It works just fine in almost every civilized country.

This is a question of basic civic virtue, not laws, policy or operating procedure.

The cops are only afraid when minorities own guns. See the Mulliford Act in California signed by Reagan when he was governor with the full backing of the NRA.

More recently see the White people who fully armed marched on the capital in Michigan, yelled at police and they did nothing.

Would you propose banning knives too, so police don't have to be worried about pulling over someone with a knife?

Police are the biggest cowards indeed.

> Police in the US are rightly very afraid when pulling over someone for something petty like speeding because that person could be upset and have a gun. Where I'm from cops are not afraid because nobody has guns.

They aren't actually scared. Publicly, they might talk about how stressful their jobs are etc. etc., but speak privately with one who is comfortable with you and you'll discover they are not scared in the slightest. They know everyone has their back and that they aren't really in any danger.

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