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Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

When guns were flint locks, the amount of damage one person could do was pretty limited. When machine guns became generally available (and i'm aware $200 is not "generally available" in 1920). That changed. These weapons were introduced to "force multiply" an individual.

Before the internet, the amount of damange a single guy with free speech could do was pretty limited. But with the internet, we're all force-multiplied. This message is probably going to be read by hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. In meat space, i'd have to be standing in a large concert hall for that kind of audince.

I still believe in free-speech, and frankly I also believe regular individuals should be able to buy machine guns. But I don't blame people for having some hesitation about that. Crazy people exist... and force-multiplying those individuals can cause a lot of harm to society. I'm very pro-speech, but I respect that we might need to have a conversation about it.

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Never owned gun, and never thought of owning one, until this year, precisely when politicians told us, on TV, that calling 911 is a privilege, and when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police. I never felt so much need to own many guns and train for tactical shooting to defend my family when needed.

Don't be confused. Regardless of political leaning, the police are not your friends. If the US were to degrade to a dictatorship it would be the police rounding up the "undesirables".

No, I'm not confused. Police has been of great help in my community. They are kind. They take crimes seriously. They are friendly to kids in school. I shouldn't need to mention this as it goes without saying, but whatever: they are kind and friendly to kids of all colors in my community.

And dictatorship in what way? You mean that the president repeatedly asked mayors and governors to ask for national guard, as required by law, but couldn't do anything because they said no? You mean the president has no power over state or city jurisdiction so he could only yell on Twitter for opening the cities -- pathetic in a way. You mean the president has no authority to ban critical race theory so all he could do is to ban them in federal agencies, again under his full authority? You mean the president has no power over media so all he could do is to call them fake news? Or you mean that the first thing that Hitler did to gain power is to disband the police, just like many of our justice fighters have been demanding?

Are you somehow forgetting the bizarre, unmarked "police" presence Trump sent into Portland? Are DHS and Border Patrol agents with no identifying information or accountability reassuring to you?

It depends? https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2013/07/are-unmarked-polic...

The Federal Police were trying to keep them from burning down a federal court house:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHb3xVqxcp8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EgMijMhS_U

I think you need a different perspective.

Curious about why people downvote this. Really just curious about specifics, as I fully understand that people have different opinions on gun ownership. I used to be really against gun ownership too.

Is it because 1. I didn't state facts? I double checked videos 2. I took what politicians' words out of context? Again, I double checked the context. 3. I should not use a gun whatsoever? But then how do I protect myself, assuming escaping is not an option (of course I'll try to run first). 4. This is advocating violence? Then what's a better alternative?

It's because this is a discussion about free speech, not gun ownership. Gun ownership was just being used as an analogy in the comment you were replying to. They'll also downvote this comment, because it asks why people voted a certain way, which is against HN guidelines.

Thanks

Well, because the below is an incendiary and mostly false statement. Additionally, just because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.

"when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police"

Pelosi on people toppling statues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z8yhQMTIiI. For I remember, statues are not the properties of the mobs, no?

AOC on looting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzlRVUJLOwo

Seattle council member on looting of stores: "Colleagues, I hope we’re all saying we understand why that destruction happened and we understand why people are upset", and "I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn't solve anything."

Minneapolis council woman supports "dismantle" police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idw83kGmwzw

And didn't Don Lemon, the warrior of our justice warriors publicly called democrats to stop rioting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp7oPgIwpZ8? To be fair, being silent does not mean supporting rioting. I guess that the Portland government letting "protesters" destruct federal court building for 5 months is not condoning either. But hey, it is the righteous people who told us "silence is violence, not me.

> because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.

Of course not. But following the same logic, we should "abolish" or "dismantle" police for a few bad apples?

> a few bad apples

You know that the aphorism is "a few bad apples spoils the bunch", right? The underlying metaphor is that you have to get rid of the entire group because the infection has spread to all of them even if it's not immediately visible from the outside.

I appreciate this discussion and your viewpoint, but I frankly fail to see your point.

What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.

On that, as an aside... I will say that as black-belt in Aikido, I remain flabbergasted that police officers are not taught simple techniques to subdue or disable people/threats without resorting to deadly force.

To your original post I will also say that owning a gun does not make you and your family impervious to crime! You cannot protect your family with a gun, it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield. On the contrary you will likely escalate a situation.

> What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.

I wish that's the discussion, but I failed to see that's what actually happened. I'm aware that many people argue that "defund police" means allocating fund for better use, but it sounds revisionism. The word "defund" means stop funding, simple and clear. BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police. The word "abolish" does not mean restructuring, nor does it mean improving. The Minneapolis council woman was specifically asked for her view about "dismantling police", and I don't see how the word "dismantling" can be interpreted as routing fund to a better org.

So, no, the left populists did ask for reallocating funds to "handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling". They were asking for dismantling police. People may take "defund" as "reallocate fund", but that's interpretation that is not supported by facts.

Sorry you lost me with "BLM/ANTIFA" and "left populists". The sides seem clear in your mind, and it's us vs. them.

It seems nothing I can say will have you reflect on your viewpoint, so I won't. Take care.

Are you taking issue with this sentence?

> BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police.

Because that sentence is literally correct.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte...

https://blacklivesmatter.ca/defund-the-police/

https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-lives-matter-philadelphia-l...

https://facebook.com/sometimesantisocialalwaysantifascist/po...

What side? I was simply stating the demand by the BLM protesters in Washington DC and in NYC, as well as the demand by the leadership of BLM movement. There are multiple videos, pictures, and NYT/WaPo OpEd that showed such demand.

> You cannot protect your family with a gun

Why make such an obviously false claim? It already has in the past.

> it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield

Non-sequitur.

Because you're spouting off about abolishing the police when a tiny fraction of people actually want to do that, much less elected officials. That any number of elected officials CONDONE rioting. It frustrates me to no end that people will hear one boogeyman then start talking about the end of civilization.

> abolishing the police when a tiny fraction of people actually want to do that

A number of jurisdictions adopted steep police budget cuts in recent months (including e.g. Seattle and Portland - home to multi-month violent riots), and Minneapolis literally dismantled their police department. So I challenge this assertion.

I also don't get how cutting LE budgets is supposed to improve policing.

My prediction is that Seattle and Portland will be Detroit within 4 years. The city will be empty, most business will flee. I left Seattle years ago because I was sick of the bullshit that's going on there. I lived on what became the border of CHAZ. I even made a video about it:

https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/9f81cd38-3ee9-4f26-...

I'm in contact with people in Seattle frequently. I'm still really shocked at how bad things have gotten. I knew police officers and defense attorneys there too. This defunding thing is not going to end well.

Pretty much my expectation as well. I'm looking for properties in Texas or Florida right now, before real estate market craters in WA, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

You haven't listened very much, then. There has been a lot of discussion on how social services, mental health services, and demilitarization of police tools and tactics would benefit cities.

In a near-zero-sum municipal budget, funding increased homelessness assistance, increased staffing for mental health response, increased investment in lower income/higher crime areas would necessitate funds being reduced elsewhere; many suggest reducing police funding in places where those new services would step up.

If cops stop responding to certain kinds of emergency calls, is it not reasonable the funding for that capacity get shifted to the group that does respond? If cops were fighting fires and then a fire department was created, wouldn't you shift some of the firefighting budget to the new crew?

The "steep" budget cuts in Seattle's LE budget amounted to 3MM out of over 400MM. Less than 1%. Is that steep to you?

From https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...:

"The Police Department reductions passed Monday represent only about $3 million in 2020 savings; the department was allocated $409 million this year — more than the city spends annual on parks and social services."

Your comment is disingenuous. This is only for 2020, this is how much they could cut _retroactively_. City council demanded 50% cut for 2021, and overrode the mayor's veto to allow this to proceed: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...

Quote: "Though the council’s bills were expected to immediately slice only about $3 million from the Police Department’s $400-plus million annual budget — nowhere close to the 50% that seven council members in July vowed to extract — the council members described the trims as a crucial “down payment” on more sweeping changes to come."

Dig a little deeper next time. Don't fall for fake news.

See the links above.

> It frustrates me to no end that people will hear one boogeyman then start talking about the end of civilization.

It also frustrates me to no end that people will see one police brutality case, which was later challenged with tons of video evidence, then start talking about all cops are bad, there is this and that evil systemically, and then start rioting and looting with all righteousness.

I use to hate police when I was younger. I think the advent of the body camera has been a game changer. I've also seen police do incredible heroically things they did not need to do. I wrote this a few weeks ago:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-the-...

We've seen hundreds of instances of police brutality, many of them after George Floyd was murdered. After Breonna Taylor was negligently killed by incompetent cops, judges and prosecutors. The state is killing people. That should be worth protesting.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797040

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Wear your mask, wear your seatbelt, get exercise and don't do drugs.

If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group. That is not meant to be an overly hateful statement.

Police (and other law-enforcement) are an exercise of the power of government. The former exists to ensure the latter can continue to exist.

Therefore, police (and law-enforcement) exist to enact laws to preserve the status quo and whatever accepted social mores happen to be in vogue at the time via statute. Protecting you and your loved ones only occurs when your needs align with the desires of the state.

If you happen to be part of a marginalized group, often, power structures dictate that the desires of the state run contrary to your needs, or, more often, the desires of the state are literally enacted to make your life more difficult.

For example - Where I live, we have a saying, "No cops, no problems." This is because a) police take 45+ minutes to respond because we're very rural, b) police generally only respond by taking notes and harassing anyone they find on the scene, regardless of their role, and c) police, once they respond, are well known to run warrants on anyone around just to be able to say they've arrested someone that day (the second part of that is my conjecture, but I also can't come up with a reason they would run warrants on an innocent bystander, regardless of said bystander's past).

My need of having my car not be stolen apparently does not align with the government's need to ensure my father is prosecuted for low-level drug offenses from many years ago. (to use the next word too much, I think) Therefore, police do not have my interests at heart. Please apply this lesson to any other marginalized group to see where the problems with police come from, and why I called you naive.

It's total absolute bullshit to say all police don't care about protecting you. You might have had poor experiences, but generalizing from that is a mistake.

Police care about protecting you just as long as your interests align with the interests of the state, is what I said.

For most people, these two things align.

Most. Not all. That is my point. I live in a community that the police absolutely have no interest in protecting. We are a problem to be dealt with, not a community to protect.

Not everyone has that experience, I understand that. But police are, by virtue of who pulls the purse strings, an extension of the power of government.

I never said all police don't care about protecting you. I said they absolutely care about protecting you, as long as your wants align with the needs of the state.

I don't think it's a necessary condition that your interests are aligned with the state for the police to protect you, unless you're applying a very flexible interpretation as to what the interests of the state are, in which case the point becomes pretty weak.

Good thing that poster was talking about police as an institution and power structure and not making your strawman argument about about what is in the heart of each and every cop

Good thing that literally their first sentence says police aren't there to protect you, which I literally cited in my post, and not some strawman argument about what is in the heart of each and every cop.

> If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group.

You’re ascribing a lot of emotion to a pretty disinterested argument. The purpose of police is to enforce laws, not protect people. This isn’t a hateful statement, it’s a fact that has been affirmed in court. If there is a shooter at your local high school, police are entirely within their rights to cordon off the area but not go in and intervene (this is precisely what happened in Florida). That’s not to say that those same police officers were indifferent to the lives and plights of those students, but their goal is to enforce laws, not save all lives by any means necessary. Trying to generalize your experience of police into their policy is a mistake.

How does cordoning off the area and not going in reflect enforcing the law to the best of their ability? Mainly in contrast to cordoning off the area, and then sending at least someone in.

Because it is to the best of their ability. Sending someone in sounds good, unless of course you’re that someone, and then you get to worry about either dying or killing someone innocent. Police have no duty or responsibility to risk their lives in order to save someone else, just like an emt, firefighter, lifeguard, etc.

Since the beginning of time, civil societies have had police and a justice system. I know it's in the old testament.

Society needs an authority to turn to to resolve disputes or injustice and to maintain order, the alternative is chaos.

That authority may not be perfect, it may have certain biases that need to be worked on, but without it, disputes will be won by the superior marksman.

Absolutely, 100% with you on that.

I guess, then, at the heart of the 'defund the police' movement is an attempt to move toward working on those biases.

That is what is lost in much of the conversation - we need to fix certain things in the policing of the US - because people immediately turn to 'what will we do if there are no police'.

I guess, how do we turn the conversation from 'defund the police' to 'fix this shit' without losing people along the way?

I don't have answers for any of this.

I wonder if busting the police unions would be a place to start.

Allegedly the unions have positioned themselves as the chief obstacle to any & all reforms.

Justice system, yes. Police? Not so much. Find an Old Testament reference to a police force, if you wish to be credible on this point.

Police and military was the same thing. Today we have decoupled them for many good reasons.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_police

https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9980/jewish/Cha...

Deuteronomy 16:18

Most Americans have a positive experience with police and with police protecting them. This is true in minority communities too.

Yeah, and stats showed exactly that. If we are talking about stats and facts and truths, I wouldn't need to rant like this.

Really? I find that very difficult to believe based on the sum of my interactions with police. Maybe they're lying, but most of the people I've spoken to have nothing but negative things to say about the way they've been treated by police.

Most people have nothing to say about positive interactions with the police.

I mean I specifically ask them if they have ever had an interaction they would characterize as positive and most say "no." admittedly I've only talked to 15-20 people about this so my sample could be skewed.

How many people have you asked?

This is like the review site problem... people don't tend to walk around giving random anecdotes about good experiences with routine or common services.

But the polling is what I based my comment on. Even in minority communities, increased police presence polls significantly higher than decreased presence - and that's before proposing any reforms.

> Most Americans have a positive experience with police and with police protecting them. This is true in minority communities too.

I'm not a minority and I grew up solidly upper middle-class. But even as a child, I knew that it was really dangerous to piss off the police.

Because the police were generally considered to just be the biggest and best armed gang. Because they acted that way.

Things have gotten much better in the ensuing 35-40 years here, but there are still serious, structural problems with police impunity -- especially if you're a minority[0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/10/13/nypd-stop-frisk-warrants...

NYPD (in decades past) is an bit of an outlier... but even then, there's a gulf between "have a good experience with" and "don't piss off".

Modern polling is what I based by contention on, and I don't think citing the most notorious counter-example (and reaching back before reforms to solve exactly the problem you allege) is much of a response.

Minority communities routinely poll in favour of INCREASED presence in their communities nowadays.

>NYPD (in decades past) is an bit of an outlier... but even then, there's a gulf between "have a good experience with" and "don't piss off".

I'm pretty much with George Carlin (at least I'm pretty sure it was him) WRT the police: "It's not that I don't like the police, I just feel better when they're not around."

Most iOS users have a positive experience not having access to compilers and multitasking, this is true of developers too.

Yeah, I'm well aware of Warren v. District of Columbia. That said, in reality most police do respond to 911s, they do help communities, and they do fight crimes. Oh, the police in our town do catch mail thieves. In another word, they do protect us by upholding the law.

“ If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group. That is not meant to be an overly hateful statement. Police (and other law-enforcement) are an exercise of the power of government. The former exists to ensure the latter can continue to exist.”

Do you know this is just regurgitated political theory from Karl Marx and wasn’t considered even remotely true for thousands of years?

Is it true now? Probably not, but you seem convinced it’s true...

If you're only just finding out that calling 911 is a privilege, you have that privilege. What are you worried about?

Seems like an overreaction. No one has actually abolished any police force in the U.S., AFAIK. The Minneapolis city council made some noise about it, but most of them regret it and nothing has come of it.

Any guns you own are statistically more likely to kill/injure your family than protect them.

I appreciate the optimism. Usually I'd be optimistic too. I'm pessimistic in this case because I sense a culture shift. Few media, few intellectuals, and few politicians initially condemned the rioting or looting or violence. They did so only months later. Instead, CNN reporter could stand in front of a burning building, telling millions of people that it was a "mostly peaceful" protest. And where are the politicians when the business owners in Kenosha saw their life's work burnt away by mobs?

What does that have to do with protecting your family? No one in Minneapolis or Kenosha died as a direct result of looting/civil unrest, and no one invaded any personal dwellings. In both cities, the only deaths were protesters killed by non-protesters.

And from personal experience - I live in Minneapolis, and at no point during the unrest did I fear for my personal safety or my property. Well, except when the police with machine guns rolled through my city yelling and shooting "less-lethal" ammunition at anyone who dared peek out their front door.

>I'm pessimistic in this case because I sense a culture shift. Few media, few intellectuals, and few politicians initially condemned the rioting or looting or violence.

I appreciate your point of view and anyone who didn't condemn violence should be roundly criticized.

However, my experience here in NYC was much different.

Not only did pretty much everyone decry the violence (a significant portion of which -- and there's plenty of video evidence too -- was instigated by police), but time and again over the two or three days that there was looting, the protestors took it upon themselves to stop the looters, because no one wanted that -- except the looters.

What's more, much (not all) of the violent actions against police property were perpetrated by folks from out of town.

I can't speak to Portland or Seattle or Kenosha, but here in NYC, even some of the police[0][1] stood (and knelt) with the protestors to condemn police violence and urged the protestors (to cheers, I might add) to kick the looters and other violent folks out.

There's nuance there and it's sad (especially in the context of discussing social media) that those nuances are lost in social media bubbles where the loudest and most extreme are given undue exposure, if not primacy in the discussion.

[0] https://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/nypd-chief-of-departme...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWnzUTjGCoQ

When the printing press came out it force multiplied. Same with amplified sound.

What about the transition from parchment writing to the printing press?

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