Well he’s in a household with two grown up offspring, so there probably is some truth in it. 
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The problem is the police lie. If there were no guns at all they would be like I thought he had a knife or I thought he was about to charge me or any other ridiculous excuse. So instead of hoping an internal investigation or a court find the officer guilty we should try to prevent the situation from ever reaching that point. No most people probably won’t agree to rid police of their guns but it’s an effort worth pursuing.
They do lie. But there are cameras everywhere now which make it a lot harder.
IMO it would be a lot easier to convince people to agree to rid police of guns if we could do the same for the general populace.
Saying disarm the police but not also addressing that an 18-year-old can buy an assault rifle with high-capacity magazine and body armor w/zero paperwork or ID seems weird to me.
Abolishing the police is good when you’ve already overthrown capitalism and the ruling classes; otherwise no.
I also think complete abolishment would be better than the status quo for all but the wealthy.
Maybe some reformed system would be better than either, dunno. But I’d still rather start from scratch.
I’d be fine with “fire everyone and start over” in any place with a rotten cop culture - if we could somehow pull it off w/o the police unions destroying the whole process.
Sure let’s do both
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All hierachical regimes necessarily require the ability to project force unto their victims just like the military does. Historically, military or quasi-military forces filled that role. Historians generally credit the “Bobbies” as the first police as we know them…
In the US, Boston has “pride of place”…
Police in the US are directly derived from Slave Patrols. The police #1 job, always and worldwide, is suppressing civil society. There was no Eden like period of when the cops weren’t going around doing evictions, weren’t suppressing strikes, weren’t enforcing the patriarchy, weren’t keeping the “others” in society down… and were just simple and benign community peacekeepers. That’s all pure copraganda.
Part of the purpose of watchwords are to get people thinking. To stimulate discussion on the issues. It’s the same with “Abolish the Police”. A discussion it should be stimulating is this: what we want police to be actually be doing in our communities. As in… do we really want them to have these two conflicting jobs: (a) enforcing the hierarchy -vs- (b) peacekeeping.
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Abolishing police makes abolishing guns impossible though imo. And not because an unarmed volunteer safety committee couldn’t take away someone’s gun or close a gun manufacturer or store, but because they never ever would. And not because they would all love guns, but they would be inhibited by their respect for their neighbors making that choice for themselves.
Ok, so when do we get to the point where the policies actually get proposed? Because that’s what I’m trying to do itt.
I agree with your point. I just feel like now is the time that some real shit can get enacted. Corporate overlords and local and state govts are definitely ready to make concessions. We need to push hard for real reform - like the NY law. Anything that can help.
I agree with this and have acknowledged this multiple times. What started this is that I think changing our crazy gun laws should be part of that conversation.
But I don’t think everyone itt agrees with you that “abolish the police” is a watchword. They take it extremely literally - to the point of not being interested in any other discussion about perceived half-measures.
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The Criminal Justice Reform that Trump signed was a good half-measure. If I were in a position to do something I would have voted for it even though it does not abolish the police.
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Don’t we have an actual “Abolish the Police” thread?
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The NY policy that exposed that evil cop did actually get implemented (at least long enough for ProPublica to scrape the data). The story said it was the direct result of the protests. Stuff does happen.
Don’t get sucked into the reverse cargo cult mentality that only a naive sucker believes something good can happen. It’s very seductive imo and I even suspect a lot of it is pushed by Russian bots - as it’s their go to propaganda tool.
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Just so long as we don’t suck any other online communities in with us, that would be dangerous.
You are stifling the chat.
You are insisting it must only be about “proposals” and “incremental change”, and have been dismissive, and in the above quote even condescending, to those who want to have a different chat altogether.
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There is no possible way to reform the institution of police as it exists in the US.
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Can we at least acknowledge this?
Medicare for all? Not that radical - pretty much every developed nation has it. We do it for seniors.
Highly subsidized higher education? Not that radical - lots of countries do it. California used to do it.
Much stricter gun control? Not that radical. We’re actually the radical ones among developed nations. As with healthcare too I guess. USA #1.
Completely abolishing all police in the 3rd most populous country on earth and by a factor of 2 the country with the most guns per capita? Not really a lot of precedent for that one.
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I’m the one offering ideas, constantly posting stuff that I think could help, and getting dismissed with “just abolish the police, it really is that simple”.
I spend a lot of time looking at this problem from all angles, and honestly trying to ascertain the truth of what’s going on. Whereas many in the abolish the police crowd (but not all) seem to have made up their minds, and aren’t really into the kind of conversation you think I’m stifling.
It’s not cult mentality. It’s the reverse cargo cult - basically saying everything sucks and nothing can ever be good or fixed. Dems are just as bad as Republicans, etc.
“Sure, things might be bad here, but they are just as bad in America, and in America people are actually foolish enough to believe in the lie! Not like you, clever people. You get it. You know it is a lie.”
The idea that both sides suck equally is very seductive. It’s always delivered with a dismissive sneer. That sneer is powerful. It’s hard to push back against. No one wants to be laughed at as the hopelessly naive fool who thinks better laws can actually help.
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I don’t really have a strong opinion on abolishing the police in particular (it’s a radical policy goal, and I prefer to be radical on things broader than policy goals), but I want to point out that Suzzer is correct that vastly limiting the amount of guns people carry in this society would (1) be good in general, (2) improve the specific problem of police violence, and (3) make the prospects for a police-free society much better.
Does everyone agree so far?
This is an important question to take stock in because it demonstrates how much ground we’ve ceded to the right. To the point that a bunch of leftists on an Internet forum are hesitant to directly confront the moderate, sensible position of severely limiting gun possession, even though the very radical goal we’re talking about would become much more feasible if gun possession weren’t quite so widespread.
Yet “abolish the police” is less toxic than “severely limit the amount of guns in society” because we all know the second amendment is a sacred fucking cow to the right wing, and nobody confronts that directly because the public has been deliberately manipulated over the last 50 years to support an insane amount of weapons being legal despite it being objectively bad for society. There’s no better way for an eDem to be lauded as a reach-across-the-aisle type than saying they “support the second amendment.”
So I’ll say it.
Fuck the modern interpretation of the second amendment.
Fuck the supposed “right to bear arms.”
Take all the guns and throw them in a fire.
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