If only everybody at that protest had been armed, the cops would have been so much safer.

[DetlefK]

Guns make people safer because there is always a good-guy-with-a-gun around to shoot the bad-guy-with-a-gun.

In conclusion, the only way to make the streets safer, the only way to make sure that less cops are killed, the only way to make sure that cops are less nervous and less anxious about getting killed is putting more guns into the hands of more people.

Guns for everyone.

Just imagine how calm and professional cops will be once they know that every single person giving them a weird look is packing heat.

[uponit7771]

1. I would live to hear the NRA response to this, the person who DID have an AR-15 turned in their

... gun to the cops when the shooting started

[imanamerican63]

3. I disagree with your comment.

I am friends with several police officers and have family members who are police officers. To lump all of them racist, is just ignorance. Yes, there are many who cross that line, but most of them are doing their job protecting you and me.

[Hoppy]

4. Yes, but there is another factor --- The Blue Wall of Silence.

That is where cops hide evidence or give testimony to hide the illegal behavior of other cops. Those cops are as responsible for hatred against cops as the ones who perpetrate the behavior.

Your cop friends will never conduct themselves in a manner to be called illegal, racist or whatever. But will they report illegal conduct on part of their brothers in blue? I'd give you 50/50. What do you think?

[arithia]

8. and sadly, protecting each other

over protecting the rights of citizens. Cops are a lot like doctors in that they don't really police their own. History is littered with the names of good cops driven out of the force for fighting back against institutional corruption and "good cops" who silently allow their co-workers to rape, pillage and murder citizens.

"It's not me, it's the other guy" has allowed white America and white American culture to ignore the problems of institutional racism for far too long. If generalizations about "good cops" and "bad cops" and who gets lumped in with who bothers you, I would hope that in the same breath you would condemn the generalizations cops rely on to decide who is an active threat.

The problem with prejudice is often time it is subconscious. Many aren't even aware they are doing it.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/science-of-racism-prejudice

You see it with doctors too- many surveyed believe absolutely stupid falsehoods about blacks perpetuated by cultural myths that date back to the slave trade.

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/4296.abstract

The police aren't any better. These falsehoods about biology have an impact on how police officers act and react to what they deem as an active threat. If even med students and doctors think, falsely, that a black man or woman is less likely to react to pain, they may be more likely to use lethal force. You see it time and again with the portrayal of young brown children as unstoppable evil juggernauts that had to be brought down with lethal force.

Until police departments and officers universally condemn this behavior and make an effort to address the problem, the stigma caused by corrupt cops will continue to drag the whole badge along with it into the depths of the massive sh*t pile of racism.

[avebury]

9. The problem with your response is the fact that,

while there are a lot of good cops, they overwhelmingly fail to deal with the bad cops which results in their failure to do the job for which they are hired. The blue wall and police unions continually protects the bad cops resulting in a public that no longer trust the police. You might find out that there are more people who view the police more as a threat than the "terrorists".


As long as police departments refuse to clean up their own houses and deal with the bad cops by holding them accountable for their misdeeds then all cops will be painted with the same brush. Like it or not, the failure of the "good cops" to take actions against the bad cops make them accessories to the misdeeds and derelict in their duty to protect the public - because they didn't. What is amazing is the fact that most police officers don't get it.

What is amazing about the incident in Dallas is not that it happened but that it hadn't happened sooner. I would not be surprised if there were more like it in the future.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Your blanket condemnation is bigotted and prejudiced. You know nothing about the humans killed

in Dallas.

You know nothing about how those individual officers interacted with people of all colors. Yet you accuse the dead officers ("the police&quot of racism.

[font color="red"]Prejudice is pre-judging.[/font] Don't do it.

You write as if they deserved it when you write "fools". The dead officers were not fools.

[imanamerican63]

6. Nicely said. We need to separate the facts from the hipocary that divides the country.

[DanTex]

7. That's disgusting bullshit. The cops who were killed had nothing to do with anything.

They were innocent people doing their jobs. And now they have been murdered.

[groundloop]

10. NRA etc. need to be held accountable (2nd Amendment Remedies, Armed Uprising, etc.)

THIS is what the NRA, Sarah Palin, and all the other right wing lunatics have been promoting. Now that it's happened they're all up in arms about the need for more police protection etc. They need to be held accountable for the violence they've been promoting every time a discussion came up about gun control.

[DinahMoeHum]

11. Pull on a tiger's tail and taunt it long enough. . .

. . .don't act shocked. . .SHOCKED. . .when it turns around and mauls you.

What goes around. . .comes around.

Just my 2 cents.

[Chemisse]

12. You forgot the NRA exception for black people.

Whites are the 'good guys with guns'. Blacks, on the other hand, are 'armed' (and therefore dangerous, making it okay to shoot them for causing a little tingle of fear).

[Surya Gayatri]

13. Well, isn't that a given? GUNZ don't kill, people do.

Outlaw GUNZ and only outlaws will have GUNZ.

The NRA is probably drafting legislation as we speak for a "Mandatory Carry Law":

Every (white) adult citizen MUST in future be armed at all times, when in public spaces and on public roadways.

Whether on foot or in a motor vehicle, all (white) citizens will henceforth be obliged to conceal-carry, the only dispensations being for those too physically disabled to do so.

(White) citizens may be stopped and checked for compliance at any moment by law enforcement. Citizens of color may be body-searched at any time to verify that they have no firearm on their person.

Sounds like a plan that'll work. Let's get behind it.

[calimary]

14. I usually follow that with "yeah. People kill people. WITH GUNS."

FUCKING GODDAMN GUNS.

And I'm sorry, NRA, more guns is NOT the answer. More guns = MORE CARNAGE.

[Surya Gayatri]

15. But, the willful cognitive dissonance just goes on and on.

In an OP I started in the AA group, the "gun enthusiasts" tried to argue that America's predominantly white, gun-loving culture has nothing to do with the present climate of murderous violence against the AA and other ethnic minorities.

I cry my beloved country.

[calimary]

18. No kidding.

Yeah, MY ASS that has nothing to do with the present climate of murderous violence against people of color. MY ASS they're not connected.

More guns = MORE CARNAGE. PERIOD. END of sentence, END of argument.

Shit, Surya, my husband and I were talking about this, a few minutes ago. He recalled growing up in a white-bread community where, I'm not kidding, the city ordinance there mandated that all blacks needed to be out of town by 6pm. My husband said he always assumed that by the time he was 50, that would all have ended. That we'd have grown up and evolved and moved beyond all that. He's 67 now. I commented that I thought that would have been the result after the election of Barack Obama as President. That this surely marked a turning of the page, that this was proof we had grown up and gotten over it and put this shit behind us and moved beyond all that. Yeah, MAN was I wrong, too. I was SO HAPPY that night. I just knew this meant we'd finally closed a sordid and miserable and shameful chapter in our history. That was SO OVER. We grew up and knew better than that, and BECAME better than that. We'd FINALLY gotten over it and put that shit down, for good.

MY ASS.

[Surya Gayatri]

20. This very reality explains SOME of the "disillusionment" with BHO, I think. You and I and

millions of others wanted so badly to believe that BHO's election was the watershed, the true turning point, the final spurt of growth of Americans towards national adulthood. We thought this superb symbol and charismatic man could single-handedly erase 300+ years of horrific history.

Like you said so succinctly, OUR ASS (in a sling).

[calimary]

22. That's EXACTLY what I thought.

Exactly what I thought. I was so sure THIS was IT. THIS is the moment we've been hoping and praying for and trying to work toward and finally make happen. We finally got there. "We MADE it! We FINALLY got there," I thought. "Here's the evidence, right here! An African American just got elected to the Oval Office. This PROVES it - we finally got there! We've just shown the world we've grown up and we're OVER it!"

MAN-oh-MAN was I wrong. But I realized that way before today. The first time I heard about the mushrooming statistics of threats made against the President - a 400% increase, at least, according to the Secret Service. And remember the study that was issued, in the first year of his first term, if I remember correctly, that this increase in domestic terrorism stemmed from right-wing extremist groups. Remember the outrage that erupted - from many of those same right-wing extremists? The yowling and screeching that finally demanded, AND GOT, that report withdrawn? That report was SPOT-ON! But I guess it hurt their widdle feelings or something. So we then simply must take care of THEIR hurt widdle feelings, while the rest of us remain vulnerable. At risk. Hostages to the damn fucking gun-worshipping subculture. Stuck in the crosshairs.

I'm sorry, but I am fucking sick and tired of being held hostage by the fucking goddam 2nd Amendment - and all its flagrant misinterpretations and WRONG-HEADED applications and extensions. SICK AND TIRED OF IT! I want to tell all the gunners - I'm sorry. I don't care about your so-called "rights" anymore. You have already had way more than your fair share of so-called "rights." You're a fucking menace. I care about MY rights to live without being menaced by my gunned-up fellow citizens. ISIS doesn't scare me NEARLY as much as our own home-grown domestic terrorists do.

Carrying a gun, even completely legally, sure didn't do Diamond Reynolds' boyfriend any good, did it? And those so-called "rights" that allow civilians to acquire and own and amass arsenals of military-style assault weapons didn't keep those cops in Dallas safe, either, did they?

[Surya Gayatri]

24. Your last paragraph says it all. The answer is up in neon: GUNZ are NOT the cure for the disease.

"Carrying a gun, even completely legally, sure didn't do Diamond Reynolds' boyfriend any good, did it?"..."Weapons didn't keep those cops in Dallas safe, either, did they?"

[IronLionZion]

16. That's exactly what the gun nuts at the Bundy ranch were saying

They saw the occupy wall street protesters get abused by cops and they concluded that they should bear large guns as a show of force to keep the police away from them.



Notice that these white men are still alive after pointing powerful dangerous weapons at police in a threatening manner.

[calimary]

19. Gun goons.

War is not the answer. And GUNS are not the answer, EITHER, dammit!!!

More guns = more carnage.

[IronLionZion]

21. The answer

is calamari

[calimary]

23. And once I actually tasted some well-prepared calimari that didn't taste like I was eating

rubber bands, I came to like it a lot!