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Comment by cfmcdonald | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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