John Chuckman

COMMENT ON THE IDEA OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT AS PROTECTION AGAINST TYRANNY

 

Much as I hate the way American police and military behave week-in, week-out, I don’t understand how any thinking person can believe the Second Amendment offers any protection whatsoever.

The police force of just a single large American city today constitutes a small army, indeed about two divisions, and they are extremely well-equipped.

Rebellious people with rifles would stand no chance against them under any circumstances.

And then, just behind the police, there’s the National Guard of each state, armed with everything from jets to tanks and flame-throwers.

And, of course, behind that, there’s the massive American armed forces armed with plenty of terrifying weapons.

Clowns out in the streets in camouflage clothes with rifles, even large crowds of them, would only provide target practice.

There is zero protection in the Second Amendment, and of course it can be cogently argued it was never intended to be protection, just a relic of the way people prepared for wars in the late 18^th century with citizens’ militias.

If you want a better country, one somewhat free as opposed to what you have now in America, you need to work for immense internal reforms.

Just the way police are hired, trained, and armed are immense issues. Generally, they are not screened for psychological problems – such as a leaning towards psychopathy – and often they are fairly low in intelligence. Then they are thinly trained and given lethal weapons with virtually no consequences for using them against unarmed citizens.

A standing armed forces the size of some small countries is a huge issue. Virtually all the Founding Fathers would have despised the Pentagon. It is like cancer to a democratic society.

The Pentagon influences American attitudes and practices tremendously, from making young men into trained killers in large numbers to supplying many of the men who end up becoming brutal police. It is also by nature authoritarian and does not help democratic values thrive.

America truly is a violent and brutal place. Guns in the closet can do nothing to alter that fact.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO RUSSIA INSIDER

Ukrainians should be very careful about any training from American police.

American police forces have a well-earned reputation for violence and abuse.

They kill a large number of innocent Americans every year – estimated at 1,000 to 1,500 – far more than any terrorist dreams of. The statistics are not kept, almost certainly to suppress the shameful reality.

Few if any of them ever are dismissed or charged which means implicitly that American authorities accept the behavior.

But as few abroad, happily watching re-runs of American television situation comedies, will know America is a very brutal society in which to live.

Murder and violent crime rates are high. Police are often brutal. Prisons are extremely brutal. America maintains the world’s largest population of its own citizens behind bars. Some of its “super-max” prisons are an affront to human rights and decency. It embraces the death penalty too.

American police are militarized in their equipment, training, and attitudes, and the trend in militarization has only increased greatly in recent years. With all the meaningless colonial wars America has been fighting, there is a huge pool every year of ex-servicemen of course, all trained to kill, who need to be absorbed back into the civilian population, and police work is one of the typical destinations for them.

On top of those horrors, in recent years many American police forces have undergone training from Israeli forces, and surely there is no nation on earth whose record of killing and brutality on a per capita basis exceeds that of Israel.

It is a rather bleak picture in total, and I think any society which uses training or ideas from American police is desperate or lacks basic understanding.