HELP! POLICE!
I'm going to say something here that is going to raise some hackles. Then I'm going to explain my statements and, hopefully, make everyone buy it. Here we go. Ready?
Buy a gun. Get a bat. Own some weapon and have enough skill to use it to save your own life and the lives of your family members. DO NOT RELY ON THE POLICE TO SAVE YOUR LIFE FOR YOU.
First off, kudos to Officer "Smith" for having the guts to post this. Growing up in a cop family, I can verify from first hand experience that police officers don't admit to being less-than-superhuman easily. It's also refreshing to see a police officer actually call on folks to arm themselves - we see all too often the "only *I* [as an "Only One"] should have a gun" mentality, whether under the guise of officer safety or the old "you'll only have your gun taken away and used against you" rubric.
He breaks it down perfectly: Even in the best case scenario, someone calling into 911 to report a violent crime is going to have to wait anywhere from 5-10 minutes. We've seen reports involving shootings where it takes the responding police officers nearly half an hour to get to the scene. This isn't necessarily a knock on the police involved; in many cases the routing that 911 has to go through to get to a remote area, combined with a large area of coverage and such might mean that folks wait 20-25 minutes - or longer - for the cops to arrive.
Add in that the Supreme Court has ruled that the police are under no obligation to protect you, and it's simply amazing that anyone uses that "you don't need a gun, that's what the police are for". As I've said in the past, owning a gun for protection doesn't make you a wanna-be cop any more than owning a fire extinguisher makes you a wanna-be firefighter or putting on your seatbelt makes you a wanna-be race car driver. It only means that you understand that you and only you are your first and best line of defense.
Go take a read - it's refreshing to see this kind of attitude from one of the "thin blue line".
That is all.
6 comments:
In defense of police officers, there has always been a large number who have felt this way. Though, they tend to be in areas where the majority is more pro-gun.
I suspect that if you scratched the surface of the belief that "cops don't want armed citizens" you'd find that it stems from the government not wanting armed citizens.
There was some sort of gun control proposal last year that a number of big city chiefs of police (including the one in Philadelphia, which gave me a clue) supported. You can bet real money that the chief in a large city has his beliefs dictated to him by City Hall, not the rank and file officers or the citizens he serves. Since police departments follow a rigid command structure, lower ranked personnel dare not disagree publicly or else risk losing their jobs. So the big chunks at the top of city government appear to be speaking for the entire force.
When I went to a local police department to get fingerprinted for an out-of-state pistol permit the officer who took my prints spent almost the whole time chatting about his guns and what a deal the Florida non-resident permit was. He hardly seemed like he was trying to discourage me.
Anecdotal though it is, I know of someone that discharged their firearm at trespassers that had been threatening him, while on the phone with 911, and officers never responded.
For the liberal arts majors, let me give put this in your terms. We all know that "deus ex machina" is bad. It ruins the book, movie, story, et cetera and confuses the audience. When you rely on police, you are essentially calling out for a deus ex machina, an outside influence to extricate you from a crisis. In the real world, that rarely works out well. Besides, it makes you look amateurish as the author of your own story.
Does anyone else appreciate the irony inherent in a California cop advising people to do what would gain them negative attention from California cops?
From what I've seen it's usually the police chiefs (who are generally political appointees) who are front-and-center in the anti-gun movements.
Refreshing indeed.
I have tried, in vain, to explain to people that the police are not there to protect you; that's simply not their job. Their job is "to keep the peace".
As Robert Heinlein pointed out a long time ago, authority and responsibility complement one another. If the two get out of balance, you're in trouble, one way or another. Given that the police cannot be sued for failing to protect you, they are not responsible for your protection, because they're not accountable. And if they're not responsible for your safety, it's utter insanity to give them the authority for your safety.
In an ideal world, people would understand that responsibility for their own safety begins with them... and it goes to another only if they voluntarily surrender that responsibility. Looked at that way, does it make any sense to surrender that responsibility to someone who owes you no apologies for failing to protect you? I don't think so.
But all too many adults these days seem to crave being taken care of... God help us.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
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