131–140 of 145 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Grand juries are a safeguard for the accused. Do they work in practice? No. Grand Juries have an especially hard time finding anything wrong with police conduct and are routinely used to "legitimize" questionable police activity. I'm not ready to agree to eliminating them but it isn't hard to understand why someone might throw it out there as an idea.
Why? So we can do away with the pretense?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_of_the_Plebs
A modern tribune should play both the role of sheriff and prosecutor. The powers of a tribune should be constrained to act for the people against government agencies. To that end, they would have power to arrest and detain government officials, convene grand juries, and prosecute trials.
To do their job, a modern tribune and their family would require lifetime immunity from local law enforcement. To enforce this immunity, any interaction by local law enforcement would need to be punishable by suspension and jail time and the burden is strict liability.
But the tribune could not be a position of total local authority. Their powers would need to be constrained to local government officials. And they would need to be under the jurisdiction of country Sheriff's or State police.
This would break the incestuous relationships between the DA office, the police, and the judiciary.
I would like to remind everyone that the US gun ownership rate is not the cause of US gun crime. A key assertion of this article is that guncrime is high because guns are common, and thus police have a somewhat justified reason to shoot first to defend themselves. I would like to remind everyone that ownership of a military assault rifle is mandatory for 2/3rds of all men between 20 and 34 in Switzerland, and the rif…
> US gun crime and police aggression is the result of unhealthy gun culture and an unhealthy attitude towards mental health, not ownership rates. The USA doesn't have a monopoly on crazy people. What we do have a monopoly on is the most guns per capita of any first world country. If we didn't have the highest concentration of guns of any first world country, we also wouldn't have the highest gun homicide rate of any…
> 300m guns in circulation... what wonder that people get shot. [Edit: what wonder I get downvoted, kind of expected this]
...have you seen how well armed the State is? You'd be a fool not to own a cannon or two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many countries enforce these things more reasonably including the UK where I live where you are unlikely to get your car towed after being late doing up your seat belt and we have about half the road deaths per mile. I'm not convinced it's infantile to complain about it.
They would let you drive home in the UK without a valid license? I am disbelieving.
How about also ending grand juries altogether (or at least in cases of potential homicide)? It's obvious that the people on the grand juries are not qualified to asses anything and it's an archaic system not employed by any other country ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury ). In addition, the prosecutors' powers need to be curtailed. Such crimes should always be charged, regardless of what the prosecutor wants.…
How exactly does eliminating grand juries help with out-of-control law enforcement? Grand juries are a safeguard for the accused . Do they work in practice? No. But eliminating them concedes the problem to the prosecution entirely. You're not the first person I've seen suggest this, and I'm baffled by the logic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Firing a shot in the air is reckless -- the bullet/round comes down with the same speed and momentum as when it was first fired, and it's gotta land somewhere -- and I'd be surprised if that was the standard operating procedure of any law enforcement agency in the world (however my surprise doesn't mean it isn't true). Perhaps you meant they fire a warning shot in the ground, but there is a big difference and that…
> ...the bullet/round comes down with the same speed and momentum as when it was first fired... This would only be true if air resistance wasn't a thing. Physics is against you on this one.
Lightweight rounds, such as birdshot, are safe when fired into the sky. That is the exception.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other countries the police is even obligated to fire a "warning shot" (in the air) before shooting to disable (and only later can shoot to kill).
Actually no certainly in the uk if a copper has to fire they are trained fire to kill - of course in serious anti terrorist situations they call in the SAS.
It is only because German police have to fire their guns so infrequently that this has not caused innocent fatalities. The practice violates numerous firearm safety rules.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with that qualification that is still crap logic. There are lots of guns in America, but the number of Americans who own guns are at all-time lows. The "number of guns in America" figure is deceptive because of all of the people who own dozens to hundreds of guns. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/04/a-minority-o... Arresting somebody who owns one or two guns is really not inherently safer than arrest…
It isn't because gun ownership is up, it is stating that police shootings occur because of the mere fact that there are already more guns in the USA than any other first world country, thus police are more likely to encounter criminals with guns. We also have the highest gun homicide rate of any first world country. The two are directly related.
Police in America are less likely today to encounter guns than they were 40 years ago, but police shootings are apparently at all time highs. If their theory held water, that would not be the case.
If you need proof that police in America are out-of-control thugs you only need to look at this shocking photo from Oakland last night: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops-outed-... In which an out-of-uniform CHP officer is brandishing a gun in the face of a photographer while another plain-dressed CHP officers wearing a bandana over his face tackles a protester. These cops had no reason to be in th…