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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.