Police work for the State. The State orders them to work for the Public when it interests the State. Intervening in violent crime and property crime can be seen, cynically, as a PR move.
To be beholden to the State for justice and protection is fine when the State is beholden to the Public for their consent. Today, in the West, the Public has been so thoroughly disarmed, and /disrobed/, that consent is a formality, consent can no longer be withheld.
Look no further than Flock and FISA for the ongoing crisis of consent.
When cops are released from the State apparatus, they'll be given the respect and admiration they deserve. Until then, it's difficult to separate them from their incentive structure.
I'm sorry you went through a difficult time of your life, I can relate. I would like to point out a gun doesn't make destroying oneself any easier. They are heavy and cold and they have a particular smell, they taste like metal, and the hole in the end of the barrel so strongly implies destruction that even pointing it at oneself carries incredible gravity. Many people that purchase a gun for this purpose abandon the idea when they have the object in their hands.
Before crystallizing strong opinions about guns I suggest you spend some time learning to wield them. It's trivial to travel to a place that embraces guns and engage in a training session. A lot of people are surprised that the reality of it is very different than they imagined. It's not like in the movies. Kind of like how driving a car is not like in the movies. I have many friends who have no interest in guns who I have introduced to shooting, and even though they have not changed their opinions they told me they enjoyed the experience. With enough familiarity guns are not feared, but respected, similar to driving a car makes first time drivers nervous. We are surrounded daily by miriad tools we take for granted daily that have awesome lethal power within them, we'd all be wise to remember.
I joined the cadets at school. I've shot pistols, rifles, even a Bren machine gun, which was fun. I'm under no illusions that guns in movies are realistic ;)
edit: and the statistics on gun suicide contradict your point, which I missed earlier [0]
Which partly drives my curiousity around this (and I realise that my tone on the original question was harsher than I meant - this is genuine curiosity). I just cannot envisage a situation where a gun would improve matters. I've been in a few fights, have some scars. Even in those situations, having a gun would not have improved the situation, and might very well have killed me. So, yeah, I'm really curious about why you think making guns more widely available would be good?
Well said, I will also add that the source of all fear is ignorance, and that includes everything, from guns to disease to imaginary monsters. You do not cure it through avoidance, quite the opposite.
They do for reasons, but if those reasons are not compelling they will move. There are already machine stops all over - many tiny near ghost towns have one (often not in city limits - farmers often have a side business and this is one option). If those machine shops can compete better because they don't have the regulation the customes will find them.
Yes and the response is telling you that you can build something orders of magnitude more sophisticated without any trouble. The point is, the firearm is not the tube the projectile comes out of. Firearm is closely defined and not intuitive to the general public.
this is really cool but it's missing a lot of context... like... they're taking pictures of the ground beneath their feet. it would be a very autistic way to tell the story of a hobbit's journey without the context of what they're looking at and why.
this slideshow is missing a narrative. people normally travel and orient themselves by landmarks. their journeys are related amongst themselves by language surrounding common landmarks.
I assume the different angles are different cameras mounted at different parts of the rover and used for different images? It would be nice to be able to select a particular camera and just follow the view from that, say.
To be beholden to the State for justice and protection is fine when the State is beholden to the Public for their consent. Today, in the West, the Public has been so thoroughly disarmed, and /disrobed/, that consent is a formality, consent can no longer be withheld.
Look no further than Flock and FISA for the ongoing crisis of consent.
When cops are released from the State apparatus, they'll be given the respect and admiration they deserve. Until then, it's difficult to separate them from their incentive structure.
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