Zarathud wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 9:26 amAnother solution would be to reduce the number of guns so that police aren’t always expecting a gun to be drawn.
Until you can get the half of America that wants guns in their homes to agree to give them up, calling it a solution is pissing into the wind. It's thoughts and prayers. I think that in a lot of places now, legally armed civilians are essential because of the problems created by guns and social/economic disparity. Taking away legally owned firearms won't fix the social issues or remove guns from criminal hands and would leave honest, average people at the whim of "average police response times" - i.e. long after they've been shot/robbed/raped/beaten.
Fix society's issues first and the perceived need for guns
should decline. It wouldn't bother me at all to live in a country with cops who have guns but keep them in the trunk of their cars unless absolutely needed. I'm a gun owner both out of enjoyment of it as a hobby and out of a feeling of moderate necessity. It'd take the police 8-10 minutes to get to my house from their station, and we have both high-value puppy sales in addition to having a seemingly endless parade of lost people looking for our neighbors (who, I believe, do a brisk trade in less legal substances). It makes me and my wife feel better and sleep better to know we have a backup plan beyond "hope the cops arrive fast enough".
Find a way to remove every gun, legal and illegal, and I'd be more for it - though Trump has proven some gun nuts right in wanting to hold onto their right to form a militia against tyranny if they need to. I didn't think it might be a possibility until his presidency, and now I don't think anything is actually "off the table" or "in the realm of impossibility" - he's proven that a government that runs on norms and expectations has serious gaping flaws. That's a whole different thread, though.
You say “reasonable to have shot in this circumstance” but after so many times the police shoot, it’s no longer as reasonable. The citizens are going to stop cooperating. They’re going to go to their cars, rather than put themselves in dangerous police custody.
The time and place to stop cooperating is not when someone with legal authority to do so is holding a gun on you. It's the protests and ballot boxes. It's venues where your voice can make a difference. No one is ever going to convince a trio of armed, hyped-up cops who are intent on arresting you that what everyone needs to do is just calm down a moment and stop trying to arrest them. There's no polite discourse that will help. There's no aggressive action that will move them to stop and reconsider. The only outcome to being anything other than a limp, wet noodle when a cop wants to arrest you is endangering yourself.
Zarathud wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 9:29 am
It’s also fair to say that — even if you wouldn’t prosecute the officer — the shootings are making the social situation MORE dangerous. That one officer may feel safer today but thousands more police are at risk because nothing changes.
I believe you're absolutely correct. I wager that the police in the US that aren't totally bent, racist pieces of shit are sweating anytime they have to draw on someone of color. They know exactly how it will play out if they feel they have to shoot. Even shootings that aren't clearly murder and abuse of power are creating riots.
I don't blame anyone who gets angry over it, either. For many, this is another notch in the gun of the cops and another reason to hate them. I simply disagree with that position
in this particular case.