Lestat,

Try to respond to this. I'm not unsympathetic to wanting cops to not have fancy guns or even guns at all and I'm also not unsympathetic to the tree of liberty needing to be fed with the blood of tyrants, but civilians carrying AR15s in 2017 America is not of any practical value to revolutionary politics imo.

Who kills more for political reasons? Id guess its not even close.

Because they're, you know, the police? What does that even mean? The motto of most police departments is "To Protect and Serve". Police are public servants, not some paramilitary force that can overrun and overtake an entire city.

They should be. But what about when they're not? And a good case can be made that here in the States many are not! Entire police forces and the judicial systems above them are corrupt with filled with issues of systemic racism and "protecting their own" even when they commit outright crimes!

That's what I'm saying.

Cops shouldn't have ****ing tanks! That's what we have a national guard for that is supposedly always at the ready.

Why is it junk? Why should police forces be able to outgun an entire population of the citizens they are supposed to be serving?

They lol because it's a shortcut to thinking.

Right wing militias types have been dreaming about a civil war for a long time. My whole life. The left wanting to give it to them is newer. People will blame the left and attempt to re-wright history but the lefts political killing is a one off compared to the rights and a reaction to the right going to the extreme in electing trump.

I know all the blame for wanting to bash each others heads in should be on the left because they are mean and PC colleges!!

Asserting your way to an alleged victory because you think that because your proposal is symmetric and therefore correct is not a demonstration of intellectual heft.

To protect and serve, they need better equipment than "bad guys" can get. We want things to be lopsided in favor of the police because we want them to be able to come in and crush someone trying to start **** up.

If the problem becomes the police are no longer serving citizens, it doesn't really matter what kind of gun they carry.

We need our guns to revolt against a corrupt US government that has drones and tanks.

I like how in this fantasy the government is not going to be using any of it's tools to fight back vs the militia. The police officers are just going to be holding batons while the Bundy clan sniper them off one by one and restore dignity to the country with their masculine beards.

yeah, drunken racist uncle dan will really step up and restore democracy with his assault rifle if hell breaks lose... lol

Anyone who uses the argument we need guns to protect us form the government is delusional. Hunting, ok. Protection form the other nutters out there, ok i guess though they are more likely to be shot by their own gun...Like to shoot them, ok. Fighting an M1 Abrams tank, lol gl.

dagger is an idiot who posts fake news he found on WND, idk why people would bother engaging him

I think my stance is very reasonable. I believe in the right to bear arms. As to the degree to what extent, should depend on something. Obviously, I don't think people should be able to arm themselves with Napalm or MOABs, or hell fire missiles. So my gauge is our police forces. If a police officer is allowed to possess and use it, I think a citizen should. I don't see what's so unreasonable about that.

Hmm. But you gotta admit if a dictatorship were ever to be attempted, it would be very convenient if no one had guns.

You way under estimate the disruption a few thousand well armed people can cause.

Hitler increased gun ownership in the populace, and it is not like armed revolt stopped the Trail of Tears.

No. They don't. The Chicago police department employs roughly 13,000 officers. How many bad guys we talking about here?

Crush? Can you give an example? Dude steals cash from a cash register and you want the cops to come in and crush him with overwhelming force? What about a drug deal in progress? How much crushing should they do?

Police are already NOT serving the citizens in huge swaths of minority neighborhoods. Not only are they NOT serving them, they are performing a great disservice to them.

I'll have to look that up unless you have a citation handy. I'd find that incredibly interesting if true.

Notice how they actually correct stuff? Still waiting for fox to do the same.

A dictatorship won't happen without the military, and they don't care about armed civilians.

And you way underestimate the power of trained soilders.

I'm for gun rights, also for a change to gun rights. The second part is hard to answer, but what I do know is it is a big LOL to anyone thinking that the 2A and going after the government would do anything. The army and govt have so many options in weapons that I feel they wouldn't be afraid to use them against a militia. The citizens guns vs. The USA. My money is on the government.

I mean you do realize when the 2A was written, everyone had the same kind of guns? There are now WMD, drones, auto and semi-auto, tanks etc. It is old and outdated, but at the same point I see why some people don't want to change it. Because it you give the right to change it then everything can be changed in the Constitution eventually. Give em an inch and they will take a mile, we all know how the govt works.

Wish I knew the name of the video, but if someone could find it (I'm at work and no utubz) it is a video of a guy going into an office to do a mass shooting, but he is only armed with a musket and only gets off one shot because he must reload it, primer it, powder it. They had no idea what weapons were going to be here in this day and age when it was written, they were writing it for the then, not now.

Quantity shouldn't matter, we don't want to throw bodies at a situation we don't have to. An example would be the attacks in Paris or other similar situations with gunmen holding people hostage.

Obviously I'm not saying we should live in a Judge Dredd type society just that the police should be able to handle situations like that one. Don't you think that's more because of the the methods they use and not the weapons they possess?

I'm not a fan of police becoming overly militarized either but limiting them to only things available to civilians seems counter productive when the real issue is their training and how they do their jobs in general. Salt Lake City trained its cops to chill out in stressful situations and as a result they haven't killed anyone since September 2015, and that was a home intruder who stabbed a woman.

Can we stop with the butthurt gun grabbing in here and focus on the fact that Bernie Sanders is out there killing people to take over the country in 2020 tia.

You think the military is just gonna start dropping bombs on Philadelphia?

Nah. I'm sure that's not it.

I've already way over argued this more than I care to just to make a point. I stated in one of my first posts on the subject that I'm personally not a gun guy. I don't even own one. But I get why people do. And I get why they don't want to give their guns up while more and more police forces are being militarized.

because wookie is too lazy to do the right thing and ban the most obvious trolls sometimes

They would do so at great risk. The USA using its military might to attack its own citizens would be a much bigger PR problem than local police forces gradually securing and gaining control over minorities, individual groups, or sections of cities.

I absolutely realize that and its one of the main points of my argument.

Imagine the US government using WMD and drones on its own citizens. Just take that in for sec. Now imagine a few thousand well armed citizens who have secured 5 city blocks. You think the military is just gonna start dropping massive ordinance bombs and blowing up buildings to smithereens disregarding the collateral damage of killing women and children?

And you don't think the government already knows what a nightmare scenario this would be? Again, you way under estimate the amount of fight and resistance that can be put up by a reasonably armed group. For Christ sake they'd use 30 squad cars and a couple of SWAT team just to surround a lone gunman holed up in an empty local WalMart.

But I'm fine with gun control laws. I really am. I just don't want police having too much power. That's all.

Military is already on Trump's side. Have you seen how much control he's given them over foreign policy? Have you seen any pushback from law enforcement or the executive branch over his private prisons or harmful deportation policies? Every major law enforcement union endorsed him and Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General who only cares about expanding mass incarceration as much as possible.