Of Arms & The Police

In the United States today, the chances of an unarmed citizen being killed by police are probably better than even. In many jurisdictions police actions are on par with something that would be routinely seen in the Third World; residents of wrongly raided homes, people under the influence of drugs or alcohol, who are understandably belligerant, cases of mistaken identity, and people who have a limited command of English have all been victims of police lethality. It seems to me that the majority of these occurances have happened in places where the citizenry would be barred from the use of arms; in any event, the killing of a police officer, even in cases of self-defense, is considered by many to be an act of such severity, that it would warrant capital
punishment, as if the police were accorded some sort of demi-divine status. Police men and women are people, just like the rest of us, who have undertaken a job that can best be described as foolish. They demand respect, yet they themselves rarely give it. There is a certain animosity
among police today, they suspect everyone of being up to no good, and it is this deep-seated paranoia that is usually the cause of violent encounters. When they do happen, the offending offficer is more often than not, not held accountable. One thing that buggers me, why is it that
liberal supporters of civilian disarmament always insist that " only the police and the military need guns"? If there are to be no guns among the general populace, why on earth would the police need to be armed? The military I can see, but cops? No. If the people are unarmed, then the police should likewise be unarmed. There are a few countries in the world that still field unarmed police- Ireland, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand and the U.K. are but some examples.
With the exception of the U.K., these countries do not have the crime problems that we have here. I am not advocating disarming our police, but there has to be a limit as to what is acceptable behavior among those police. If an unarmed citizen goes down to a cop's bullet, he or she should be held just as accountable as anyone else, nor should the police be held in such light as to be considered "the only ones".