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Comment by TACIXAT | Hacker News Reader

I think protestors should be able to be armed with whatever police are. If they're alright firing it at someone they should be alright getting hit by it.

This would be really cool because it would turn protests into paintball matches. Show the police that the citizens have the numbers and with equal weaponry they would be overpowered. Remind them who they answer to.

Another thing, somewhat of an extension of the first, is that any less-lethal weapon the police carry for use on protestors should be legal to every day carry. I carry a pocket knife (legal in California) for emergencies. I really don't want to stab someone and deal with blood. It is illegal to carry a ton of less lethal alternatives like blackjacks, clubs, or batons. That has always struck me as strange. I'd much rather give someone a few bruises if it comes down to it.

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This will destroy any credibility the protesters have. It will stop being about police violence the instant this happens. I think protesters should continue to protest without violence and do everything they can to counteract the methods used by the police to protect themselves and other protesters.

That said, I am angry at what I see and it is difficult to not feel contempt for the police using teargas, pepper spray, flash bangs, and rubber bullets. That contempt has prompted me to demand reform.

> It is illegal to carry a ton of less lethal alternatives like blackjacks, clubs, or batons.

I'm not going to dig up sources for this. However, when I looked into the reasons for laws prohibiting these items about a decade ago I discovered that these laws came to be in the late 19th and early 20th century. Washington explicitly prohibits nun-chucks and butterfly knives. It appears this was intended to target Chinese Americans who were more likely to poses these. Those individuals may have been disenfranchised from owning firearms. This was a way to further disenfranchise them from owning any weapons. Readers of this comment should do their own research to confirm or disprove.

> I think protestors should be able to be armed with whatever police are.

That's insane. A fundamental tenet of (US) law is that using a weapon while committing a crime is itself a crime.

We're not at war. There are a lot of people breaking the law, and we need to reduce that with as little harm as possible.

>There are a lot of people breaking the law, and we need to reduce that with as little harm as possible.

Cops are the ones breaking the law. The way to "reduce that with as little harm as possible" is to abolish the police and replace them with a public safety department that isn't systematically power hungry, racist, and violent.

You should start looking at the videos. I've seen a couple of unconscious people being kicked in the head this week by "protesters". These people are nothing like law-abiding.

There are people being there to break bones and fuck things up, on both sides. If we focus on them instead of the underlying issues we all lose.

comparing civilians to police officers is a false equivalency.

If a few bad apples discredits an entire protest movement, why don't a few bad apples discredit the entire law enforcement apparatus?

> A fundamental tenet of (US) law is that using a weapon while committing a crime is itself a crime.

This conditioning to think that protest is a criminal act leads many to justify any police action including those that lead to death.

> We're not at war.

Tell that to the unaccountable, militarized police forces.

> That's insane. A fundamental tenet of (US) law is that using a weapon while committing a crime is itself a crime.

If the police were held to that standard, perhaps they wouldn't be so trigger happy.

> a crime.

Protesting is not a crime.

> We're not at war.

I'm not sure that's a great consolation to all the dead black people, those still enslaved in the prison system or in enforced poverty.

Protesting is a crime now?

What world am I in Christ. You got a bunch of people protesting. The cops put their boots to their throats. And you’re hemming and hawing about them “breaking the law actually” by protesting.

I can’t even begin to see your perspective. These jackbooted thugs suck and all this deflection is weird as hell. You don’t need to beat the living shit out of someone to arrest them that shouldn’t be radical.

> Protesting is a crime now?

Arson and looting are, and that's what the post you're replying to meant.

> A fundamental tenet of (US) law is that using a weapon while committing a crime is itself a crime.

Shouldn't that apply to police as well?

At least in the US, this is why it's not uncommon for certain demonstrations to be full of people who are armed, openly. It's much less likely that the police will open fire on a crowd that is at least equally, if not more, heavily armed. Though, this requires a certain critical mass among the demonstrators to be successful. I believe I see this more commonly with conservative demonstrations as the overlap of conservative values and gun ownership is somewhat high.

It's the demonstration equivalent of mutually assured destruction, whether one agrees with it or not.

There have been a few incidents of Black Lives Matter protest groups armed with rifles. I don't believe there has been any violence between those groups and police.

It worked before: https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...

>In 1967, 30 members of the Black Panthers protested on the steps of the California statehouse armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols and announced, “The time has come for black people to arm themselves.”

>The display so frightened politicians—including California governor Ronald Reagan—that it helped to pass the Mulford Act, a state bill prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms, along with an addendum prohibiting loaded firearms in the state Capitol. The 1967 bill took California down the path to having some of the strictest gun laws in America and helped jumpstart a surge of national gun control restrictions.

Yea, I don't want to stand off and with real bullets. If someone pepper balls me I'd hit them back with some paint though.

Funny how as soon as they have their less-than-lethal weapons turned on themselves they suddenly need to use deadly force (Rayshard Brooks).

I think the reason police treat right-wing groups far more leniently than left-wing groups is because right-wing groups are much more likely to be armed and resist violently. Ruby Ridge. Waco. Oklahoma City. Right-wing groups have consistently demonstrated their ability and will to resist encroachment on their rights and freedoms. Whether those rights and freedoms are morally legitimate is irrelevant on the streets, especially for those with skin in the game. At the end of the day, the police just want to go back home to their families, and being shot isn't a part of that.

Meanwhile, left-wing groups don't resist to the same degree and in the same manner...because not blowing up a daycare with a truck bomb is the responsible thing to do. Hence they get stomped on.

The right understands and has always remembered what the left has forgotten. Freedom isn't free, and the price is much, much, much higher than going out and waving a sign for a few days.

Another reason is there's a lot of police that are sympathetic or even members of those far right and white supremacist groups. (eg: the Lynwood Vikings a white supremacist gang in LA composed entirely of deputy sheriffs) [0]. It's not isolated either and supremacist groups in some cases encourage members to join the police. [1]

The podcast Behind the Bastards is doing a series at the moment about the direct evolution from slave patrols to police and the, lets say cozy, relationship between groups like the KKK and police.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynwood_Vikings

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...

You bring up a great point. Right-wing groups are highly proactive about using every lever at their disposal to advance their agenda, including infiltration of government agencies. I don't think it has to be strictly right-wing groups, though. Scientology, whose political leanings I'm unfamiliar with, infiltrated a variety of government agencies, and as far as I know only paid a one-time price (short prison terms for leadership) for long-term gains in unchecked reach and influence.

All of which brings to question what moderates and left-wing groups are doing in order to secure their own future in this country.

As an alternative to committing crimes, I found South Korea's protest model fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Geun-hye#Choi_Soon-sil_sc...

1 million people sat in the government square for two whole months in winter in order to force the president of South Korea to not just resign, but forcibly impeached. When was the last time we in the U.S. did that? MLK's million man march comes to mind, but I think that was only one day. Going back further rings no bells for me.

I don't think you have to rely on the police to be sympathetic to your cause to get what you want. You do need to exert material losses on certain levers of power. Cause enough pain to certain keys, and they will unlock the safe for you, doesn't matter what they believe in. Right-wing groups bomb and shoot people, because their numbers are low and they need disproportionate acts to get the respect they want. South Korea shuts down the country, because consistently doing one act is easy when many people are on the same page and want the same thing.

The great thing about powerful people is there's so many different ways to hurt them. It sounds sociopathic because it is. Waving a sign for one day used to work because for most of our history we had leaders who genuinely wanted to work for us, they just didn't know where it fell in terms of priorities. For those who crave power and nothing else, us waving a sign does absolutely nothing.

> I think the reason police treat right-wing groups far more leniently than left-wing groups is because right-wing groups are much more likely to be armed and resist violently

I think the reason police treat right-wing groups more leniently is that police officers, at all ranks from cadets through chiefs, and the prosecutors with whom they work, are more likely themselves to be members of right-wing groups.

I had to read that twice to figure out that I might agree with it.

Likely to be members of right-wing groups? No. More likely than they are to be members of, say, antifa? Probably yes.

I'm not sure I buy that that's why the police treat right-wing groups more leniently, though. But then, based on news reports over the last year or two, I'm not sure that the police treat right-wing groups more leniently than left-wing. It looks to me that the police are letting both proceed a fair distance past the point where I think they should be reined in. (But who knows how far you can trust the news reports about such events...)

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