There is a logical argument to be made by comparing guns to cars. Both are potentially lethal weapons, but can be owned by trained, licensed, law abiding citizens. In order to drive a car you need to take lessons and pass a test. You don’t see anyone up in arms about that (pardon the pun). Why not have the same system for gun ownership?
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That would be an infringement of the second amendment, or so the gun lobby would argue. You could argue that gun ownership needs more regulation than car ownership. A gun is designed to kill or main (or to be pedantic, to propel a piece of metal at hundreds of miles an hour at a direction chosen by the user of the gun), a car is designed to transport stuff.
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There is a lot of discussion in the Daunte Wright case over whether the cop was just pretending that she wanted to go for her tazer and always intended to shoot him. That’s presented as a worst case scenario, but I dont think it is. I think there is something far more terrifying and broken about the possibility that interactions with cops can so often lead to death in the absence of a premeditated commitment to just go out and kill a young black man. In this case you dont get any real improvement in the situation without a complete overhaul of the entire concept of policing. It’s not just about weeding out bad cops, it’s about an entire reimaging of what their role is and what their goal should be when interacting with citizens.
Daunte Wright died because policing is the US broken, not because the cop was some raging racist. This kid died because cops know they have the freedom to kill citizens with near certain unwavering support from their superiors and institutions and their entire training approach and attitude is based around that, resulting in interactions that can only exist when cops know they have near complete immunity.
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It’s blocked for me, but is this the one where people gravitate towards buying supposedly infamous guns that have been involved in incidents they know about?
One thing I find totally lost in the current discussion is any reminder that police represent the law and that we are a society of laws. Scuffling with police, running from police who have given a lawful order to stop, arguing with police…all of these are a degradation in the rule of law. If citizens feel free to backtalk police, to disobey their lawful commands, to get into physical altercations with them, then we as a society are another notch down toward disorder.
As tragic as these police interaction deaths are (I would exclude the George Floyd case, which was unambiguous police wrongdoing), in each one a law-breaking perpetrator took an action which contributed to his own death. Not saying death was warranted. It was not. But this constant pointing at police as if they should be perfect decision makers is unbalanced.
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By definition, a gun is designed to kill. With planning and the right gear, you could kill hundreds in seconds in a busy place. You just can’t do that with a car. And a car is not designed to kill.
If he hadn’t have tried to drive off, trying to escape from the police, he wouldn’t have died. She shouldn’t have shot him, no question there but his actions either ended in prison, hospital or a morgue. Don’t run from armed officers, it’s not a complicated concept. If you live in a country where the police are armed, don’t conduct yourself in a manner which might lead them to shoot you. Running away whilst being arrested for example.
I would take this another step further and add insurance. If I own a car and want to drive it, I have to be trained and then pass a test to get a license. That could be a useful function of the NRA perhaps? There could be some standard needed to pass a test in order to get a license to own a gun? Gun safety, marksmanship, seems reasonable enough in a gun owning culture.
To take the car analogy further I also need insurance to drive it. The responsibility of owning a gun is great, and the potential for serious mishap is obviously there, so there should be a requirement to carry insurance too.
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I realise that guns are designed to kill and cars are designed to transport, but I was trying to find an argument that would be difficult for NRA types to refute. I like the insurance idea. Surely the premiums would be so prohibitive as to severely restrict gun ownership even further.
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Thank goodness for that.
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Anything else would have been a travesty.
A lot of news today.
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I hope his family, and the family of the boy shot minutes before the verdict was announced, and the family of the man shot two weeks ago…
Anyways, you get the point. I hope George Flloyd’s family at least can find some peace now.
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I saw a stat that Chauvin the 8th officer convicted of murder since 2005. In that time US police have killed 15,000 people.
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How did these happen, any breakdown? I mean there’s deaths in shootouts, deaths resulting form torture/abuse (a lot of people die of heart-attacks in our police custody 
) etc.
They were recorded as killed by police but I don’t know the breakdown. Obviously many of these deaths will have been, even by the most liberal of standards, considered justified but just based on the evidence we have from videos and the ratio of convicted murders to deaths it is clearly very out of proportion.
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Ridiculous
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I remember my mate Simon being suspended from school for having tramlines. I drew up my daughter’s school’s hair policy. If you send your child to a school that has a strict hair policy, don’t then complain when it’s enforced. Like moving next door to an airport then complaining about the noise.
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What about those parents who sent their kids to your daughter’s school before you drew up your policy? 
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