Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Washington Post: You Can’t Improve Police Conduct Without Stricter Gun Control Laws
3 views
Skip to first unread message
Michael Ejercito
Jun 16, 2020, 9:10:31 AM6/16/20
to
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/washington-post-you-cant-fix-improve-police-conduct-without-stricter-gun-control-laws/
Washington Post: You Can’t Improve Police Conduct Without Stricter Gun
Control Laws
GUN CONTROL
BY DAN ZIMMERMAN |JUN 11, 2020 |158 COMMENTS
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
LINKEDIN
EMAIL
Police conduct protest
(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Our friends in the anti-gun media know an opportunity when they see one.
While the murder of George Floyd didn’t involve a firearm in any way, shape
or form, the Washington Post’s Robert Gebelhoff has engaged in a bit of
pretzel-like logical contortion in order to argue that you can’t expect to
reform the nation’s police forces without further restricting the gun rights
of all American citizens.
Reading his op-ed, you know what you’re in for when when he quickly whips
out an old favorite of the civilian disarmament industry, claiming that
America is in the midst of an “epidemic of gun violence.” We could fully
fisk this load of equine fecal matter, but we’ve done it dozens of times.
The inconvenient fact that Gebelhoff refuses to acknowledge is that America
has been experiencing historically low violent crime rates at a time when
the number of civilian-owned guns has never been higher.
ADVERTISING
But then we get to the good part. So to speak.
Police reform and gun reform go hand in hand. Reducing the easy availability
of guns would not eliminate the problems with policing in America nor end
unwarranted killings, but it would help. …
Simply put, police are more likely to use lethal force when they believe
lethal force might be used against them. We’ve seen the tragic results:
Police fatally shooting scores of people, including children, because they
mistake their toy guns for real weapons. Or shooting an adult man because he’s
holding a cellphone. Or a hammer. Or a pipe. Or a lighter.
Got that? Gebelhoff points out that police sometimes kill innocent people
because they mistake things in their hands for firearms. What’s his
solution?
[M]ore stringent gun laws would also represent an important step to reduce
police shootings and to make communities safer overall. There are a number
of remedies available — from mandating safe storage of firearms to requiring
licenses for ownership, many of which states have already implemented — that
can reduce gun deaths without violating Second Amendment rights.
Safe storage laws have literally nothing to do with police misbehavior or
their mistakenly killing unarmed people. Not a single thing. As for gun
licensure, not only is that a direct infringement on the right to keep and
bear arms, but there is no other enumerated civil right — speech, voting,
religious freedom — that is subject to a government permission slip.
Requiring a license to exercise your Second Amendment rights is both
unconstitutional and abhorrent. To say nothing of the fact that having a gun
license wouldn’t reduce a single occurrence of police misbehavior or prevent
the shooting of one unarmed individual.
In a nation of over 400 million firearms, there is literally no way of
keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and those who might present a
reasonable threat to police officers. Crooks don’t bother with niceties like
gun permits, even in the few places that currently require them (ask anyone
at the NYPD). So requiring licenses will do nothing to alleviate a cop’s
fear that the thing in a perp’s had is a gun.
Despite what you read in the media these days, the vast number of police
officers in this country are good people doing the best job they can. The
few bad actors like the Derek Chauvins of the world make all cops look bad.
How would Robert Gebelhoff do something to “reform” policing? He wants to
see . . .
…overdue structural and cultural changes needed to excise the bad behavior
in law enforcement. That should include the demilitarization of police, a
greater investment in local social services and a national reconciliation
effort in communities plagued with officer-involved violence.
One out of three constitutes success in baseball, but if you want to
positively affect the quality of policing in this country, that’s a dismal
batting average.
Demilitarization would be a definite plus. The over-use of SWAT teams and
the use of de-mobbed military gear by cops around the country is a serious
problem that increases the us vs. them mindset among police forces and
officers. But dumping even more taxpayer dollars into “local social
services” (the federal government alone spent $361 billion in 2019) as well
as setting up some kind of ill-defined, airy-fairy “national reconciliation
effort” would no doubt have zero practical impact on the conduct of the
average cop on the beat.
If you really want to get bad cops off the streets and make all of them
think first before they act, there are two surefire changes that need to be
made. First, eliminate police unions that protect the jobs of bad cops like
Chauvin. He’d been involved in two prior shootings, was the subject of 20
complaints and received two letters of reprimand in his 19 years on the job.
It’s difficult if not impossible to fire problem cops…until something like
George Floyd happens.
The second remedy for bad policing is the elimination of qualified immunity.
That’s the judiciary-created doctrine that protects government employees
from being personally liable for constitutional violations. Violations like
the use of excessive force. If police officers — or their civilian superiors
in the mayor’s office — were held personally liable for infringing on
individuals’ civil rights, there would be a lot less of that kind of
conduct.
Somehow, however, Mr. Gebelhoff didn’t mention those solutions. Why? Did
they just not occur to him? Some might say it’s because they violate two
dearly held features of government in this country that are jealously
defended by liberals; Democrat vote-generating labor organizations combined
with a lack of individual accountability. But we couldn’t possibly comment.
In any case, Gebelhoff’s fatuous prescriptions for somehow improving police
officer conduct by limiting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding
Americans are irrational, incoherent and would be wholly ineffective. In
other words, they’re exactly what we’ve come to expect from a Washington
Post columnist opining on the subject of gun rights.
Washington Post: You Can’t Improve Police Conduct Without Stricter Gun
Control Laws
GUN CONTROL
BY DAN ZIMMERMAN |JUN 11, 2020 |158 COMMENTS
Police conduct protest
(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Our friends in the anti-gun media know an opportunity when they see one.
While the murder of George Floyd didn’t involve a firearm in any way, shape
or form, the Washington Post’s Robert Gebelhoff has engaged in a bit of
pretzel-like logical contortion in order to argue that you can’t expect to
reform the nation’s police forces without further restricting the gun rights
of all American citizens.
Reading his op-ed, you know what you’re in for when when he quickly whips
out an old favorite of the civilian disarmament industry, claiming that
America is in the midst of an “epidemic of gun violence.” We could fully
fisk this load of equine fecal matter, but we’ve done it dozens of times.
The inconvenient fact that Gebelhoff refuses to acknowledge is that America
has been experiencing historically low violent crime rates at a time when
the number of civilian-owned guns has never been higher.
ADVERTISING
But then we get to the good part. So to speak.
Police reform and gun reform go hand in hand. Reducing the easy availability
of guns would not eliminate the problems with policing in America nor end
unwarranted killings, but it would help. …
Simply put, police are more likely to use lethal force when they believe
lethal force might be used against them. We’ve seen the tragic results:
Police fatally shooting scores of people, including children, because they
mistake their toy guns for real weapons. Or shooting an adult man because he’s
holding a cellphone. Or a hammer. Or a pipe. Or a lighter.
Got that? Gebelhoff points out that police sometimes kill innocent people
because they mistake things in their hands for firearms. What’s his
solution?
[M]ore stringent gun laws would also represent an important step to reduce
police shootings and to make communities safer overall. There are a number
of remedies available — from mandating safe storage of firearms to requiring
licenses for ownership, many of which states have already implemented — that
can reduce gun deaths without violating Second Amendment rights.
Safe storage laws have literally nothing to do with police misbehavior or
their mistakenly killing unarmed people. Not a single thing. As for gun
licensure, not only is that a direct infringement on the right to keep and
bear arms, but there is no other enumerated civil right — speech, voting,
religious freedom — that is subject to a government permission slip.
Requiring a license to exercise your Second Amendment rights is both
unconstitutional and abhorrent. To say nothing of the fact that having a gun
license wouldn’t reduce a single occurrence of police misbehavior or prevent
the shooting of one unarmed individual.
In a nation of over 400 million firearms, there is literally no way of
keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and those who might present a
reasonable threat to police officers. Crooks don’t bother with niceties like
gun permits, even in the few places that currently require them (ask anyone
at the NYPD). So requiring licenses will do nothing to alleviate a cop’s
fear that the thing in a perp’s had is a gun.
Despite what you read in the media these days, the vast number of police
officers in this country are good people doing the best job they can. The
few bad actors like the Derek Chauvins of the world make all cops look bad.
How would Robert Gebelhoff do something to “reform” policing? He wants to
see . . .
…overdue structural and cultural changes needed to excise the bad behavior
in law enforcement. That should include the demilitarization of police, a
greater investment in local social services and a national reconciliation
effort in communities plagued with officer-involved violence.
One out of three constitutes success in baseball, but if you want to
positively affect the quality of policing in this country, that’s a dismal
batting average.
Demilitarization would be a definite plus. The over-use of SWAT teams and
the use of de-mobbed military gear by cops around the country is a serious
problem that increases the us vs. them mindset among police forces and
officers. But dumping even more taxpayer dollars into “local social
services” (the federal government alone spent $361 billion in 2019) as well
as setting up some kind of ill-defined, airy-fairy “national reconciliation
effort” would no doubt have zero practical impact on the conduct of the
average cop on the beat.
If you really want to get bad cops off the streets and make all of them
think first before they act, there are two surefire changes that need to be
made. First, eliminate police unions that protect the jobs of bad cops like
Chauvin. He’d been involved in two prior shootings, was the subject of 20
complaints and received two letters of reprimand in his 19 years on the job.
It’s difficult if not impossible to fire problem cops…until something like
George Floyd happens.
The second remedy for bad policing is the elimination of qualified immunity.
That’s the judiciary-created doctrine that protects government employees
from being personally liable for constitutional violations. Violations like
the use of excessive force. If police officers — or their civilian superiors
in the mayor’s office — were held personally liable for infringing on
individuals’ civil rights, there would be a lot less of that kind of
conduct.
Somehow, however, Mr. Gebelhoff didn’t mention those solutions. Why? Did
they just not occur to him? Some might say it’s because they violate two
dearly held features of government in this country that are jealously
defended by liberals; Democrat vote-generating labor organizations combined
with a lack of individual accountability. But we couldn’t possibly comment.
In any case, Gebelhoff’s fatuous prescriptions for somehow improving police
officer conduct by limiting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding
Americans are irrational, incoherent and would be wholly ineffective. In
other words, they’re exactly what we’ve come to expect from a Washington
Post columnist opining on the subject of gun rights.
0 new messages