Gangsters in Blue

Radley Balko has just posted what I think is the most moving essay yet on the Cory Maye case and the drug war in general (if you think it’s worth sharing, digg it). Getting beyond the legalities, moral appeals, and outrage, Balko simply recounts how the drug war cost a good cop his life and a great father his family and freedom. When you feel like the cards are stacked against any chance of decency in this world, read this post and dig deep down for the strength, not simply to vote for the right politicians and see the right policies enacted, but to make your neighborhood a better, safer, more humane place.

This one comes from my favorite vulgar libertarian, Radley Balko. Despite some of his corporate apologism he is doing some absolutely awesome work on police militarism. Today he has a penetrating comment on police justifications for SWAT raids:

This sort of case also emphasizes the inherent contradiction in the way police justify these raids. You’ll notice in the article that the police say they conducted the no-knock, middle-of-the-night raid to catch the suspect and his family off-guard. They then turn around and say the girl who fired the gun should have known they were police officers. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say nighttime SWAT raids are necessary to catch people unaware while they’re sleeping, then say they “should have known” that the men invading their homes were police.

This time it’s from Eric Husman:

The Left may not favor the police state, but they are for a police state. The Right is just the opposite: While they claim to be against a powerful, central government, they keep building the powerful, central government.

Of course, he’s entirely correct about the establishment Left and the Right. And keep in mind that the generality or specificity of their authoritarianism changes in direct proportion to who’s in power - in other words, the Right was all up in arms about militant law enforcement in the not too distant past. The establishment is defined by its pettiness, superficiality, lack of reflection, and most of all its sheer hypocrisy.

It occurs to me while reviewing the endless electronic reflection on the VT incident that the gun control crowd and their sympathizers don’t offer any rational, realistic arguments against allowing students to carry on campus. I have yet to see one person actually volunteer a concrete reason why it should be disallowed. What we get instead are appeals to emotion based on perceived feelings of vulnerability.

From an otherwise decent article by Lila Rajiva:

However much we may support the second amendment, do we really want students packing heat in their book bags, as filled with alcohol, drugs and partying as most campuses are today?

From a VT administrator:

The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We’ve seen that fear here, and we don’t want to see it again.

From a journalist:

Moreover, guns on campuses could turn smaller confrontations into major incidents. As drinking is a large part of university social life, a common drunken brawl could escalate into a deadly duel if firearms were present.

Many students don’t get to hand-pick their roommates in residence; imagine the discomfort of sharing a small room with a stranger who keeps a gun under his or her pillow.

If there are guns in residence and around campus, violence could spread beyond the university confines and into bars and other nearby places.

What do all of these opinions have in common? Simple: they are examples of disarming people on the grounds of vague fears. We just don’t like the idea of students carrying firearms. Students are unpredictable and potentially irresponsible, and that scares us, so let’s take that idea off the table. Let’s ignore the fact that guns are just as deadly to the bad guys as the good guys, and that shooting a bad guy is one very straightforward and undeniable approach to solving the problem.