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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Take away the guns and the ability to use any real force (ie on duty cops are held to the same standard of assault as everyone else) The police department as a whole needs that ability but reserve it for a small exclusive units that can only get called in to deal with matters that require rapid deesclation by force.

When 99/100 of best cops are glorified meter maids, social workers, and civil servants you'll see the machismo disappear overnight.

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I honestly suspect requiring the guns and military equipment to be pink and have mandatory hello kitty stickers would have a positive effect.

My home town has an big armored vehicle. The last homicide was 2008. It's effectively a prop in their military role play.

Taking away cop guns in America would just equate to a lot of dead cops.

I wasnt aware having a gun could stop bullets from killing you? Unless you think its appropriate for cops to be acting as judge jury and executioner.

You didn't realize that? You really need to think harder on this.

Are you aware that having a gun can stop a grizzly bear's teeth and claws from killing you too?

> Unless you think its appropriate for cops to be acting as judge jury and executioner

So if someone starts shooting at at random people in a mall, and a cop has a gun on him, he is supposed to run up and use some judo to disable the mass shooter, since the cop shouldn't act as judge jury and executioner?

So your argument is that cops should have weapons because some extraordinary circumstances sometimes happen and we should hope that instead of acting like the cops at Parkland did they take it upon themselves to circumvent the justice system and instead dispense "frontier justice"?

I am going ignore the part about grizzly bears because I dont believe that is in good faith and is basically just a non-sequitur

I fail to see how thats any better than disarming the bullies and letting specialized teams IE SWAT teams take care of extraordinary situations. That is if they even manage to show up in time to do anything which is in doubt.

I think you haven't been paying attention if you think people shooting guns at the public, or at cops, is an "extraordinary circumstance" in America. It's not just mall shootings, or parkland. It's also people just shooting at cops after getting pulled over for speeding, which is far less likely to get national news attention.

You're free to ignore it, but I added the point about grizzly bears because you seemed confused how a gun can help defend you against someone with a gun. It can help defend you against many threats, in fact.

Edit:responded from the account on my phone, sorry for any confusion.

The premise of a gun being able to defend you from anything is dependent on you using that gun to kill said thing. I feel like maybe I didnt get across what I was trying to say clearly enough. Cops being protected by guns = cops killing anything they "perceive as a threat"

I dont believe police officers should have the right or responsibility to dispense "frontier justice" meaning to execute people because they do something that is illegal. I am sure there is some legal definition of when an officer is allowed to shoot and kill another human being but I, and I hope most other people see that as circumventing the rule of law, making themselves into the judge jury and executioner.

The entire premise of our legal system is thrown out the door when we accept police officers having the capability to use their own judgement to dispense death. See "Robocop" this isnt some new idea. Cops having guns on them is equivalent in many ways to martial law. I hope I dont need to explain why martial law is not a good thing for a free society.

I think generally, cops do not execute people they find doing something illegal. There are far too many people in US prisons for that to be the case.

They do shoot people who they perceive as a threat to them(some of whom did not do anything illegal).

But I would love to know how you would like police to respond to situations that actually are a direct threat to them, if their guns are taken away. Hope they can run away quick enough?

Well I think generally police have lots of methods for responding to situations that they feel are a direct threat to them- that they use all the time. For instance tazing, pepper spray, and any other "less lethal" methods of violence.

Locking people in cages for a living is an inherently dangerous thing to do. I don't see how that should give them the right to execute people on a whim.

In fact I cant really imagine a situation where an ethical and justified police officer would ever need to kill someone. Like I said before in extraordinary circumstances I can see highly trained and equipped people as a necessity but having the run of the mill street bullies walking around armed to the teeth is, like I said before, literally equivalent to martial law.

How much is enough weaponry for law enforcement, and when is it too much?

As we have seen over and over again, the police have no duty to stop a crime in progress. We have seen where police sometimes sit there and wait for backup (ie, SWAT) before running in anyways.

No it wouldn't for the exact same reason that regular people don't need guns on them at all times. What makes the police threatening isn't individual cops projecting the threat of violence and dispensing it randomly like Batman. It's that the police as an institution have the people, time, and resources to follow you to the ends of the earth (i.e. "the long arm of the law") and dispense collective justice. If your goal is not going to prison killing a cop is a really terrible way to go about that.

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