Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Cell Phone
How many people am I allowed to shoot because they have a cellphone in their hand? Gonna guess zero?
Stuff like this comes up and people start connecting it to past shootings of other black men.
"Just like Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin." No. Not like those two. Those two guys were trying to kill someone when they got shot. They were on offense and trying to hurt people and got plugged for their trouble, by all accounts.
"Just like Philando Castile." Ok, this one I go along with. I think it may have been a mistake for the NRA not to reach out to Castile and try to help. I know the NRA has a large sympathy with law enforcement and didn't want to risk alienating that segment, but they also have a big CCW constituency, and none of us like to be wrongly shot by the police just having a CCW permit. What did Philando do besides be scared around a scared cop?
Levar Jones, Walter Scott, Philando Castile. Not, the policemen in those case did face the music, some did do time, and none are still cops.
But that's just me. I think you get more sympathy for justice when the guy the cops violate is truly innocent. I'll go to the barricades with you for them. But not for Trayvon. And Zimmerman was indeed a chuckleheaded idiot.
Also note that the guys that shot Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin are in seclusion right now.
I don't know what the future holds for the two Sacremento cops that shot Stephon Clark because they were wound up and thought the cellphone was a weapon. Something, probably, unhappy for them. Gotta have a deterrent for shooting other people that have a phone in the future. Their lives and careers are probably greatly curtailed forever now. Not as bad as what happened to Clark's life and career.
And it is not just a race thing. Cops can jack up and scare white boys, too. How close was he to getting aired out rather than just peeing his pants?
I'm not so sure the NRA should get involved in commenting on officer involved shootings at all. It seems to me that they're always going to piss off one side or the other. Citizen shoots bad guy is always a good story, but when it's citizen vs cop either the citizen is the bad guy, or the cop is the bad guy.
ReplyDeleteThen there's situation like Castile, where I think both sides made mistakes and it was a mess. People like clear cut right and wrong.
there is some wisdom in that.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that doesn't get talked about much is that the NRA HAS to maintain good relations with the police. The NRA's primary mission has always been firearms safety and marksmanship instruction, and to do that they need access to firing ranges. In many parts of the country, the only ranges available are under control of the "Only Ones", and that access can be cut off at any time.
ReplyDeleteWhen Philando was shot, the only thing to come from the NRA leadership was silence. That's when it became apparent they were far more beholden to cops than just plain Americans, and it's when I quit. If they ever admit their error, I'll join again. I expect that to be never.
ReplyDeleteI live in Sacramento. Aside from the shooting itself, the city seems to be handling it right. The Police Chief released the body cam footage within days, and the city has done everything to defuse the violence potential. Whether anything changes, I don't know. An autopsy paid for by the family shows that Stephon was hit 8 times (from 20 shots fired)--7 of them in the back. The doctor who performed it is no hack--he's a highly respected former medical examiner, and the guy who did the definitive studies about traumatic brain injuries in the NFL.
BLM and the other protestors have been remarkably restrained. There's been no real violence.
The NRA needs to drop their automatically backing the cops in shootings. That may have made some sense a generation ago or so, but not now. The police and Sheriff departments made a determined effort to weed out shooters from applying for hire back in the 90's(SanFran started even earlier, I'm told). Their managers/political bosses wanted to be "Politically Correct". When you deliberately exclude talent and interest from an activity, you don't get competence in the resulting workforce.
ReplyDeleteThe PD/SO have never been willing (frankly, they can't afford it) to pay what is needed to get, and keep, their people good with guns. They have traditionally depended on personal practice/training/history of shooting to maintain a reasonable level of gun competence in their force. Their internal trainers always started with a background of prior childhood gun experience. Not anymore. Those who don't learn to shoot as children require constant practice and training to maintain any sort of ability, and these are the same people who hate to go to the range. Common police officer comment: "If I'm not being paid to shoot at the range, I'm not going". And they don't.