Now that the surge in gun violence seems to be getting worse while the spread of Covid-19 seems to be getting better, I’m waiting for my friends in Gun-control Nation and my friends in Gun-nut Nation to come up with a new theory as to why so many Americans are walking around shooting at so many other Americans on a daily basis. 

              Here’s the basic argument that divides the two sides: More guns mean more gun violence versus more guns means more people can protect themselves from violence. So, either we take the guns away from people who use them to commit violence, or we take guns away from people who use them to protect themselves from violence.

              But the one group whose access to guns has never previously been questioned, and this group happens to use guns for both purposes, are the cops. After all, cops use guns to shoot people, which is the definition of gun violence, and they also use guns to protect themselves and others from people who would commit violence, right?

              It turns out that this question has now become an issue in the heated New York City mayoralty campaign when Maya Wiley, the ‘progressive’ candidate, who has been endorsed by that Communist or whatever-she-is rabblerouser, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, stated in a debate that she ‘wasn’t sure’ whether NYPD officers should be walking around with guns.

              Wiley got slammed by all the other Democratic candidates who couldn’t get over their joy in being able to shit attention away from having to explain exactly how they would go about cleaning up the mess that has been created by eight years of Bill DeBlasio’s tenure in City Hall, with our friend Eric Adams saying how ‘alarmed’ he was that someone would want to take away the tools needed by the cops to deal with the ‘thousands’ of guns flooding the city’s streets.

              The only problem with what Adams and the other mayoral candidates is saying is that it’s really not clear whether there really is a connection between the cops protecting the city from crime and the cops walking around with guns. The idea that a cop needs to have a Glock on his hip while he stands in the middle of an intersection directing traffic has never been questioned except there have just been too many recent incidents where cops shot the wrong people with their guns.

              So far this year, at least 400 people have been shot and killed by cops, although the rate of cop shootings is actually slightly lower than it has been in any year since 2015. So far in June, there have been at least 20 fatal cop shootings around the United States and in only one case was the shooting caught by a body cam, so we have to rely on the account by the shooters themselves as to what actually took place. And I hate to say it, but why should we assume that how a cop describes why he shot someone is necessarily more accurate than how a civilian describes doing the same thing?

              My friends who do research on gun violence are always quick to trot out the idea that we suffer so many shootings because we are the only country which gives all law-abiding residents access to guns. Wouldn’t the same argument apply to cops?

              The United States has a rate of cop killings which is 10 to 20 times higher than any other country in the OECD, which is about the same difference in the number of guns floating around between the U.S. and the rest of the OECD. 

              The cops will tell you that the reason they need to carry guns is because all the ‘bad guys’ out there have guns. But there have just been too many cop shootings recently, like the shooting of Patrick Warren in Killeen, TX where the victim was completely unarmed.

              I know cops have a tough job. I know they are underpaid, underappreciated, and usually undertrained. But that doesn’t change the fact that a Glock in anyone’s hands is a threat to public safety, okay?

Gun Violence | TeeTee Press