The Criminalization of Everyday Life

If quoting Rand makes you uncomfortable, just remind yourself that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The quote itself is apt.

Used to be military surplus stores would acquire military surplus and sell them to an amused and subsequently harmless citizenry. All that old equipment has to go somewhere; now such civilian possession is prohibited (even used Humvees (basically just off-road cars) cannot, by law, be sold to the public), it ends up routed to the only group legally allowed to have it and wants it: police. In the meantime, stores that sold military surplus have adapted by selling military-like knockoff gear, and would-be buyers are pumping money into the fast-growing "tactical gear" market.

Fact is, if all this military equipment were sold on open market, no harm would come of it. Used to be available and wasn't a problem then, and the rather large paramilitary equipment market isn't a problem now. Question is: why is the government so afraid of its own citizens possessing such gear?

> What's bothersome is that a police department is allowed to do this.

Well, that's not too surprising. Every party along the chain that has the power to say Yes or No, from the weapon manufacturers, to the US legislature awarding funding, to the DoD, to the state legislatures, to the local police departments, have an obvious incentive to say Yes. The party that has the incentive to say No is the civilian population, but you're fooling yourself if you think they actually have political power. Maybe they should vote harder next time.

One of the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution is the Bill Of Rights, one of which states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

People go bouncing off the wall around this issue as if it were one having solely to do with owning guns, but the real purpose is arranging the real power in the government. The people reserve and are ultimately responsible for the use of lethal force in the United States. They can delegate that power to the government for certain things, like a defense department or law enforcement, but at the end of the day, it's everybody carrying guns that are responsible for social order. At least that's the way it was set up.

As we've drifted away from that principle, by assigning more and more powers to the defense department and police agencies, (gun control is part of this but not the only part), those folks have quite naturally started viewing themselves as the privileged few to hold the power to make things go boom. Then we got rid of the volunteer military, further separating the mass of the population from the things carrying lethal force.

So nowadays, if you want to become a specialist in the application of power tools to destroy people and things, you pick one of a few different career paths and become one of the chosen few. This is a VERY recent development. Not 50 years ago it was commonplace to know people who could operate machine guns, explosives, and drive tanks around. To those folks, cops were just another working Joe like them except they wore a badge. On the other side, cops viewed the population as a trained asset to have and use in time of crisis. It was not unusual to consider gathering up as many armed men as necessary from an area to conduct police operations.

But the professionals got involved, and having that kind of power was viewed as a terribly complicated responsibility that the average guy couldn't handle. This created a wall in society. On both sides now, it's us against them. We need MRAPS because, hell, anything can happen, and there's just a few of us cops in this county. We are no longer all in it together. It's not like if AQ comes knocking we can knock on doors and ask for help.

This is a self-fulfilling feedback loop: as the police arm themselves more and more with special gear, the average person really can't operate it. So even more specialized training is required. Same goes for military gear, where this divide originated.

I would suggest that what we need is some sort of ready reserve system where everybody is trained at reaching 18 on how to safely use most all common forms of police and military gear. I'd further suggest that local police departments be required to have a certain percentage of their patrols as civilian ride-alongs.

There are a lot of things that can be done here, and we don't have to argue gun control to make progress. But I think we do need an understanding of how we got here in the first place. This is a trend that has been a long time coming. The War On Terror just exacerbated it.

This is a continuation of the military industrial complex. There aren't enough wars, but companies that supply the military still need to make money. So they make so much equipment that the DoD needs to give their completely usable equipment away for free.

This page should make any U.S. taxpayer sick and any non-U.S. citizen worried:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...