Who do you want to have access to significantly more powerful guns and weaponry: cops or citizens?

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

#1 -- Equality (i.e. cops and citizens equally armed/disarmed): I don't want either to have more access than the other, meaning the amount of access (or lack thereof) I want them each to have is the same.

#1 diametrically opposes my view in the case where there are a non-zero number of killing-tools involved.

No, #1 does not diametrically oppose your view. In fact, the opposite is true: #1 includes the case where A and B both = 0.

Where A is the amount of access to guns cops have, and B is the amount of access to guns citizens have, per your latest reply, I can see we both agree that we want A = B.

I'm glad we agree on that.

No two humans agree on everything, but we agree on that.


Thank you,
Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Scott, cops, same as medics and other public welfare agents have abnormal power over others and need special training and education in ethics. Unless cops get the special training and education which too often does not seem to be the case , cops should not be armed at all. If cops are fit for purpose then they should be armed but not on occasions when their weapons are viewed by their public as evidence of their brutality, as such flaunting would be counterproductive in the present climate of distrust of cops especially by minorities.

Nobody needs to be taught to kill using a martial arts technique and nobody in a happy society needs guns or flick knives. The same ethic should apply to everyone, to corporations, and to nations.

The martial arts are real powers .The ethic that should be taught to all students of martial arts is the more powerful the more the duty of care. Nobody needs to be taught to kill using a martial arts technique and nobody in a happy society needs guns or flick knives. The same ethic should apply to everyone, to corporations, and to nations, especially where offensive weapons are concerned.

The happy society is not a society where individuals are ruled by fear and distrust of others. A society where individuals are hierarchically graded into classes is not a happy society. Societies don't have to be hierarchically arranged in social classes.

Hi, Belindi,

Thank you for your reply, but you did not answer my question. Please note, the simple one-sentence question contains the phrase "equally trained". Please do answer my question:

Who do you want to have access to more powerful guns--cops or equally trained and qualified citizens?

#1 -- Equality (i.e. cops and citizens equally armed/disarmed): I don't want either to have more access than the other, meaning the amount of access (or lack thereof) I want them each to have is the same.

#2 -- Cops more armed than citizens.

#3 -- Citizens more armed than cops.


So, I ask, from the above, which represents your view #1 ( A = B ), #2 ( A > B ), or #3 ( B > A )?

[LuckyR]

Hi, LuckyR,

Thank you for your reply!

First we're talking about the police, ie the branch of the government that purportedly protects citizens against other citizens.

The above sentence seems to me to contradict itself.

We are in part talking about police (a.k.a. "cops"). In contrast, we are not talking about something that purportedly primarily protects citizens from other citizens.

There are probably many private security firms whose employees primary job function explicitly and truly is protecting citizens from other citizens. Likewise there are probably many non-profit NGOs like the Black Panthers who might set their primary function as being: defending citizens from non-defensive violence (e.g. murder, rape, slavery, etc.).

That is definitely not the primary function of law enforcement (a.k.a. police/cops). It's even in the name. If their primarily job--even merely purportedly--was to defend people, we would then probably call them Defenders or such, not "police" or "law enforcement". That's not to say everyone who purports to be a "freedom fighter" or "defender" is one, but that police are not even purportedly near that. When cops/police break down our doors to search our houses against our will for marijuana or such we all know they are not there to defend but rather to police (i.e. do the exact opposite of defending).

In many democratic countries, it's illegal just to be gay. Police are the ones who enforce such laws. Defenders are something else.

Police are the henchman who do the non-defensive violence and forceful enforcement of the decrees of those issuing the violent decrees. They are to government what the paid enforcers working for a mafia are to the mob boss. Even in terms of what's merely purported than actual, their job is not to defend their victims, but rather the exact opposite.

For more on that, I suggest you check out my topic Macro-Criminalization of Consensual Crimes and this post about statistics regarding victimless crimes from my topic Today in Violent Big Government Statism.

I was speaking broadly in my single sentance description. What I meant in detail was the police are a part of the justice system which is tasked with lowering the exposure of law-abiding citizens to the acts of lawbreaking citizens. It occasionally performs that role by preventing crimes (stings, stakeouts, undercover work) but more commonly by apprehending criminals after crimes are committed (thereby protecting from future crime, but you are correct, not protecting the victim from the past crime).

The fact that you and I find anti-gay laws abhorrent is best directed at the legislature (or other lawmaking entities) rather than the police who don't have the luxury to cherrypick which laws to enforce and rightly so.

As an aside, there are a small minority of folks who object to laws and rules of any kind thus the entire concept of law enforcement is objectionable. Law enforcement would be analogous to mafia enforcers in such a worldview. Though my guess is that view underappreciates the stability of the status quo and potential chaos of their alternative.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, LuckyR,

Thank you for your reply!

the police are a part of the justice system which is tasked with lowering the exposure of law-abiding citizens to the acts of lawbreaking citizens.

With politeness and respect, I very strongly, adamantly, and confidently disagree with the above statement.

For your statement to be true, most law-breakers would need to be breaking victimful laws, not victimless crimes.

A slave-owner doesn't execute one disobedient slave to protect (or "lower the exposure of") the obedient slaves. A king's paid knight doesn't execute a peasant to protect other peasants. The same goes for other acts of non-defensive violence besides execution.

The clear truth is that the so-called 'justice' systems of big governments are tasked with doing things like violently throwing pacifists in prison and hanging gay people.

Statistics like these prove that even in the USA today it is the rule, not the exception, just like it has been all over the globe for thousands of years.

"Justice" is just a superstition.

It's always been the case that governments and their militant enforcers (e.g. police and law enforcement) exist not to protect the general populace from violent victimization (e.g. violent robbery) but to do the violent victimization to that populace on behalf of the rulers (Kings, Queens, Mob Bosses, Slave-Owners, Violent Racists, Sexist Rapists, etc.) or others who likewise benefit from the violent victimization (e.g. the nobles, the mob boss's kids, the wealthy special interest groups and lobbyists, the white slave owners, the people investing in cotton farms, etc.). It was true in ancient Rome, it was true when martial rape was legal in the USA, it was true when Gandhi was jailed, it was true when Martin Luther King was jailed, it was true while racial slavery was legal in the USA and runaway slaves were criminals, it was true when John Brown was legally executed, it was true when Henry David Thoreau was jailed, it was true in Nazi Germany, it was true in Soviet Russia, it is true in Russia today, it was true in Europe in each country under each different monarchy from the English to the Spanish to the French and more, it was true before and after the European monarchies sailed the ocean blue and launched the largest-scale genocide ever committed against the natives in America. And it's still true in the USA today. It's always been true. It's not new.

It's not a uniquely American thing; and it's not a uniquely 21st century thing. Those are just two tiny little newer examples on a long list that's been growing for over thousands of years of human history from long before the slave-owning Romans crucified the first people on crosses.

Paid government agents committing legal murder and legal non-defensive violence (e.g. rape, slavery, robbery, etc.) has been happening consistently for thousands of years, day in and day out. It's the rule, not the exception, and always has been since the first government was formed.

It's true whether they are hunting down peaceful gays, waging a war on drugs against people smoking marijuana, hunting down runaway slaves, or throwing Martin Luther King and Gandhi in jail.

The fact that you and I find anti-gay laws abhorrent is best directed at [...]

Incidentally, to the best of my memory, I didn't say that anti-gay laws and the legal execution of gay people is "abhorrent", whatever that means.

Rather, I simply offer it as one of the very many examples that disprove the utterly false premise that most crimes have victims, or that the purpose of law enforcement or so-called 'justice' systems is to protect would-be victims. The criminals are the victims, e.g. the peaceful gay people illegally having consensual gay sex in their own home who then get legally murdered by the law enforcers. That is not the exception; it's the rule.

Throughout human history, the job of police and other law enforcement and violent government agents isn't to protect people from violent victimization, it is to do the violent victimization. They are the aggressors, not the defenders. That is the rule, not the exception, and it has been for all of human history in every large or non-local government that has ever been. And it's still true today.

As an aside, there are a small minority of folks who object to laws and rules of any kind thus the entire concept of law enforcement is objectionable. Law enforcement would be analogous to mafia enforcers in such a worldview.

Indeed, law enforcers (e.g. those who legally murder gays in places where it's illegal) would also be analogous to mafia enforcers in such a worldview, but they wouldn't only be analogous in that worldview.

Presumably, almost any reasonable worldview would see those would-be two things as analogous (if not simply seeing them as the same exact one thing by two different names). That is, at least, insofar as one does not see things like the jailing of Martin Luther King, the jailing of Gandhi, legal martial rape, and legal execution of gays as all being consensual. For one who somehow sees those things (e.g. the legal murder of peaceful gays by government) as consensual or such, it's possible to imagine they might somehow find or see some kind of noteworthy philosophical difference between "mafia enforcers" and "law enforcement". But, as I use the terms, if a powerful mob boss running the leading protection racking in my neighborhood declares one of his men "untouchable", that declaration is simply a "law" and those people who enforce it are thus "law enforcement". If I slightly and peacefully touch his untouchable man in a banned way, or otherwise violate the decrees of the mafia, and they execute me, it's fundamentally philosophically no more or less an act of law enforcement than when Uganda's government hangs peaceful gay people.One doesn't need to "object to rules of any kind" to object and/or oppose all non-consensual non-defensive violence (e.g. murder, rape, slavery, etc.) even when it's committed legally by a government, or to see the analogy between (or full-blown exact sameness of) execution by a mafia versus execution by a government, such as the execution of peaceful homosexuals by the Uganda government.

It's even more than a mere analogy. Calling (A) an aggressively violent non-consensual protection racket or (B) the murderers of peaceful gay people either (1) "mafia henchmen" versus (2) "the King's men" versus (3) "law enforcement" is--philosophically--arbitrary irrelevant semantics. The two phrases (#1 and #3) are philosophically synonymous, and if the government/mafia happens to be a monarchy with a male monarch, then so too is #2 rendered synonymous in practice in that specific scenario as well.

With all that said, you and I actually agree fully on the actual titular topic. We both answer the question, equality. On that, we agree.


Thank you,
Scott

[Belindi]

Scott wrote:

Throughout human history, the job of police and other law enforcement and violent government agents isn't to protect people from violent victimization, it is to do the violent victimization. They are the aggressors, not the defenders. That is the rule, not the exception, and it has been for all of human history in every large or non-local government that has ever been. And it's still true today.

"Today" is correct if you judge by Netanyahu, Putin, and Khamenei, and more. Cops in these countries are like private militias. Scott writes "this is the rule, not the exception" . But the situation is more nuanced than Scott says. E.g. which elite controls owns the cops/militia? E.g To what extent does the cop-owning elite control the cops/militia? E.g. To what extent are the common people the owners of the cops/militia?
There is the important point that Lucky made, that the popular culture is one of paranoia directed at a particular subgroup.

[Pattern-chaser]

Where A is the amount of access to guns cops have, and B is the amount of access to guns citizens have, per your latest reply, I can see we both agree that we want A = B.

No! I want A = 0 and B = 0. I have no commitment to A = B, unless it should happen (coincidentally?) that A = 0 and B = 0. Any presentation that includes, or even allows, a non-zero version of A or B opposes what I want, or hope for. Your option #1 allows for this possibility, so it cannot properly represent my position.

[LuckyR]

Scott wrote:

Throughout human history, the job of police and other law enforcement and violent government agents isn't to protect people from violent victimization, it is to do the violent victimization. They are the aggressors, not the defenders. That is the rule, not the exception, and it has been for all of human history in every large or non-local government that has ever been. And it's still true today.

"Today" is correct if you judge by Netanyahu, Putin, and Khamenei, and more. Cops in these countries are like private militias. Scott writes "this is the rule, not the exception" . But the situation is more nuanced than Scott says. E.g. which elite controls owns the cops/militia? E.g To what extent does the cop-owning elite control the cops/militia? E.g. To what extent are the common people the owners of the cops/militia?
There is the important point that Lucky made, that the popular culture is one of paranoia directed at a particular subgroup.

Scott is entitled to his (stated) outlier opinion, though I am confident he is all too aware that cherry-picked outlier case reports are not proof of anything though are a pretty good pot stirring mechanism and this is a discussion forum after all. Man bites dog sells more newspapers than dog bites man.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

I can see we both agree that we want A = B.

No! I want A = 0 and B = 0.

Sorry, I don't understand; It appears to be a blatant contradiction what you are saying.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

It's always been the case that governments and their militant enforcers (e.g. police and law enforcement) exist not to protect the general populace from violent victimization (e.g. violent robbery) but to do the violent victimization to that populace on behalf of the rulers (Kings, Queens, Mob Bosses, Slave-Owners, Violent Racists, Sexist Rapists, etc.) or others who likewise benefit from the violent victimization (e.g. the nobles, the mob boss's kids, the wealthy special interest groups and lobbyists, the white slave owners, the people investing in cotton farms, etc.). It was true in ancient Rome, it was true when martial rape was legal in the USA, it was true when Gandhi was jailed, it was true when Martin Luther King was jailed, it was true while racial slavery was legal in the USA and runaway slaves were criminals, it was true when John Brown was legally executed, it was true when Henry David Thoreau was jailed, it was true in Nazi Germany, it was true in Soviet Russia, it is true in Russia today, it was true in Europe in each country under each different monarchy from the English to the Spanish to the French and more, it was true before and after the European monarchies sailed the ocean blue and launched the largest-scale genocide ever committed against the natives in America. And it's still true in the USA today. It's always been true. It's not new.

It's not a uniquely American thing; and it's not a uniquely 21st century thing. Those are just two tiny little newer examples on a long list that's been growing for over thousands of years of human history from long before the slave-owning Romans crucified the first people on crosses.

cherry-picked outlier case reports are not proof of anything

They are not outlier cases; they are examples of countless others.

Here's a great way to test it and avoid any cherry picking at all: Get a numbered list of every single country or small state-sized region on Earth right now, and get a random number generator. Use the random number generator twice, once to randomly pick one place and once to randomly pick one year from the last few thousand years. Do that ten times to get ten different random countries each at a different random year. We can use those as our samples. Preferably, film the sample collection so we can all be sure it's random. In any case, do make sure it's random, so nobody can accuse anybody of cherry picking.

I'm very confident the results will prove me right. Very confident.

[Pattern-chaser]

I can see we both agree that we want A = B.

No! I want A = 0 and B = 0.

Sorry, I don't understand; It appears to be a blatant contradiction what you are saying.

No, there isn't. Let's try a different approach. Here's what I said, above, but with elided text restored to show the clarification I already offered:

I want A = 0 and B = 0. I have no commitment to A = B, unless it should happen (coincidentally?) that A = 0 and B = 0.

I.e. My commitment is not to equality, but to zero killing-tools. If A and B happen to be equal too, that's fine, no big deal, as long as they are both zero.

Now, here is your "option #1":

#1 -- Equality (i.e. cops and citizens equally armed/disarmed): I don't want either to have more access than the other, meaning the amount of access (or lack thereof) I want them each to have is the same.

This option actually covers two cases:

#1A — Equality: I want both to possess killing-tools, but I don't want either to have more access than the other, meaning the amount of access (or lack thereof) I want them each to have is the same.

#1B — Equality: I want no-one to possess killing-tools.

Although #1B can be seen as a 'special case' of the more general description of "Equality" in option #1A, there is a fundamental difference between them. All the options you provide describe how private citizens, or the police, or both, should possess killing-tools. Only the 'special case' I prefer (#1B) is different. It stands apart from the other options simply because it recommends that no-one should possess, or have access to, killing-tools. This makes it qualitatively different from the other options.

My position is that I approve of option #1B, but actively oppose any option that allows the possession of killing-tools, by anyone. I.e. I disapprove of all options except option #1B. Specifically: I disapprove of, and oppose, option #1A.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Pattern-chaser,

Thank you for your reply.

Due to mathematical law, it is impossible for A to equal 0 and B to equal 0 without A = B.

It's absolutely 100% a contradiction.

Those who want A and B to both be zero must logically answer "A = B" just as one who wants A and B to both be the highest number imaginable would logically need to answer the same. Those people wouldn't agree on much, but they would vote the same in poll.

In analogy, it's like if I kept saying you want a blue house, and then you kept saying, "No! I do not want a blue house! I want a blue house with many windows and a big fireplace!"

Then I must say you are contradicting yourself, because what you are describing is in fact a blue house, it's just a specific type of blue house, meaning you do want a blue house, and then you say, "No! I do not want a blue house! I do NOT want a blue house that has only a few windows or has little tiny fireplace! I only want a blue house with many windows and a huge fireplace!"

It leads to utterly illogical nonsense like saying, "No, A does not equal B; A and B both equal zero." That's nonsense, and it's a blatant contradiction.

I do understand your very unique specific position on guns. But it doesn't change the simple logical obvious undeniable truth of what I am saying.

If it walks like a blue house, and it quacks like a blue house, it's a blue house.

One might not like describing one's proverbial blue house as merely a blue house, but it's a blue house. One might rather talk about their fireplaces and windows, rather than the color of the house, but it's still a blue house.

If we drilled down into the specifics and weeds with fireplaces and windows and such, the poll would ultimately have 8 billion options, and no two people on this planet would vote the same. No two houses are the same. But we still can collect statistics regarding how many houses are blue houses. And, yours my friend, is a blue house. Proverbially speaking, that is.

Proverbially speaking, you and I both live in a blue house. Yours is very different than mine, but they are still both blue houses.


Thank you,
Scott

[Pattern-chaser]

Due to mathematical law, it is impossible for A to equal 0 and B to equal 0 without A = B.

It's absolutely 100% a contradiction.

I am beginning to wonder if your claimed incomprehension is down to a matter of personal philosophical principle, rather than ignorance. The distinction I am making is not especially subtle, or difficult to understand, as far as I can see.

Let's try just one more time.

N is the number of killing-tools in circulation.
N_P is the number of killing-tools held by the police.
N_C is the number of killing-tools held by citizens.
Assumption: that all available killing-tools are held by police or citizens.

Thus we can say that N = N_P + N_C. This is "due to mathematical law". And yet, despite its correctness, it is irrelevant to this discussion. It's place here, in this discussion, is nothing more than a distraction.



Is N == 0?

• Yes — Option (i). A complete absence of killing-tools.
• No — Compare N_P and N_C:
  • N_P > N_C — Option (ii). Citizens have more killing-tools, and the police have less.
  • N_P == N_C — Option (iii). Police have the same number of killing-tools as citizens, but both still have some.
  • N_P < N_C — Option (iv). Police have more killing-tools, and the citizens have less.

[Belindi]

Scott wrote:

Hi, Belindi,

Thank you for your reply, but you did not answer my question. Please note, the simple one-sentence question contains the phrase "equally trained". Please do answer my question:
Scott wrote: ↑Who do you want to have access to more powerful guns--cops or equally trained and qualified citizens?

#1 -- Equality (i.e. cops and citizens equally armed/disarmed): I don't want either to have more access than the other, meaning the amount of access (or lack thereof) I want them each to have is the same.

#2 -- Cops more armed than citizens.

#3 -- Citizens more armed than cops.

Police forces are by definition instituted to have power over the general public. The police therefore will be weaponised, but not the public. Any police force must exist on condition that police personel be educated in sociology, law, ethics*, and human rights, and that the institution as a whole is regulated by an independent authority. The latter would be a state department.
*The ethic of any state department and its employees must be to serve the people not the state or a political or religious party.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Pattern-chaser,

I can see we both agree that we want A = B.

No! I want A = 0 and B = 0.

Sorry, I don't understand; It appears to be a blatant contradiction what you are saying.

Due to mathematical law, it is impossible for A to equal 0 and B to equal 0 without A = B.

It's absolutely 100% a contradiction.

I am beginning to wonder if your claimed incomprehension is [...]

[Emphasis added.]

Are you sure you read my whole post? It's important to read a whole post before replying to it, especially with blatantly false accusations. This part is particularly relevant:

I do understand your very unique specific position on guns. But it doesn't change the simple logical obvious undeniable truth of what I am saying.

[Emphasis added.]

[View Full Post]

I completely stand by my statement "Due to mathematical law, it is impossible for A to equal 0 and B to equal 0 without A = B.", as well as the points and sentences in my previous post (which may have not been read in full).

You can change the symbolic letters by referring to A as NP, and refer to be B as NC; it's still all 100% true. Everything I've said is still 100% true. Changing the letters doesn't change the truth. Due to mathematical law, one and one one of the following must be true:

NP > NC

NP < NC

NP = NC

The above list of three options is exhaustive.

If NP = 0 and NC = 0, then NP = NC.

If NP = 100 and NC = 100, then NP = NC.

In regard to those last two sentence, a particularly relevant sentence in my last post is the last one, starting with the words, "Yours is very different than mine, but..."


In any case, every single statement in my previous post was and is true. But that post could easily be misunderstood if someone was to only read part of it before replying, rather than the whole thing, including every single sentence.


Thank you,
Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Belindi,

Thank you for your reply!

Police forces are by definition instituted to have power over the general public. The police therefore will be weaponised, but not the public.

Unfortunately, you are (statistically on average) correct; That is what often will happen. But if I can change it (e.g. by charitably providing guns to the peaceful gay criminals in Uganda), I will happily do so.

It may be the case that to do their violent wars on drugs and such the police will unfortunately have more powerful guns than us equally trained and equally qualified citizens, but generally speaking anything I can do to change that I will happily do.

If it it is in my power to make sure the citizenry is as well-armed as police, with the same restrictions in terms of training and mental health and such--I will happily exercise that power to arm the citizens.

I don't support giving citizens guns in places where police don't have guns. But I am very happy to help provide guns to citizens in places where police do have guns.

The same goes for stronger or more powerful guns:

I don't support giving citizens automatic machine guns in places where police don't have automatic guns, but I am very happy to do my part to help provide automatic machine guns to citizens in places where police have them.


Thank you,
Scott