America's police are looking more and more like the military; program transfers military-grade weapo

[Explosions]

FYI the type of gun does not mean shit when someone perpetrates a mass shooting against unarmed opponents. The Virginia Tech massacre is the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history and the guy used two pistols with 10 and 15 round magazines.

[jaegerisacunt]

[QUOTE=Swilly;42465814]You clearly don't know how criminal organizations work and think police can solve everything.[/QUOTE]

oh and you do?

If this is going to be your argument, dont even bother posting. Its literally the equivalent of just sticking your fingers in your ear and screaming about someone being wrong.

No knock warrants are dangerous, both to the people they are enacted on, and the officers that serve them.

"The number of no-knock raids has increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000 in 2005, according to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. Raids that lead to deaths of innocent people are increasingly common; since the early 1980s, 40 bystanders have been killed, according to the Cato Institute in Washington, DC"

Again to reiterate, vast criminal organizations like you seem to think every drug dealer is a part of are a minority. Not everyone is scarface. The vast majority of people selling drugs are just that, people. They are trying to get above their meager earnings or dead end job by making money on the side.

If you have enough evidence for a no knock warrant, you have enough evidence to make a case against them. Furthermore, if an arrest warrant is needed to be served and you believe the person in question poses a threat to officer safety, you could just arrest him when he leaves his house, he can no more "lawyer up" than if he had after they had arrested him in this event. The difference being here is a good lawyer has stuff to work with now because his property has been damaged in the enactment of that warrant, and his family have come under threat.

You dont need to be a tactician or anyone with more than two brain cells to understand why bursting into an unknown area, with someone who is probably armed, is a bad bad idea. He hears a loud explosion in the dead of the night, and people screaming outside his hosue, hes not thinking "oh its the police" hes thinking "someones here to kill me", adrenaline gets pumped through the body, you're not exactly in a rational state of mind.

From the wikipedia article on no knock warrants:

[quote]

Kathryn Johnston (c1914-2006) was an elderly Atlanta, Georgia woman shot by three undercover police officers in her home on November 21, 2006 after she fired one shot at the ceiling, assuming her home was being invaded. While the officers were wounded by friendly fire, none of the officers received life threatening injuries, but Johnston was killed by their gunfire.[1]
Two former Los Angeles Police Department officers, along with 13 others, have plead guilty to running a robbery ring, which used fake no-knock raids as a ruse to catch victims off guard. The defendants would then steal cash and drugs to sell on the street. This tactic led Radley Balko, editor of Reason Magazine, to complain "So not only can you not be sure the people banging down your door at night are the police, not only can you not be sure they’re the police even if they say they’re the police, you can’t even be sure it’s safe to let them in even if they are the police."[4][5][6]

Tracy Ingle was shot in his house five times during a no-knock raid in North Little Rock, Arkansas. After the police entered the house Tracy thought armed robbers had entered the house and intended to scare them away with a non-working gun. The police expected to find drugs, but none were found. He was brought to the intensive care, but police pulled him out of intensive care for questioning, after which they arrested him and charged him with assault on the officers who shot him.[7][8]

Ismael Mena, a Mexican immigrant, was shot and killed by SWAT team officers in Denver, Colorado who were performing a no-knock raid that was approved by a judge acting on false information contained in a search warrant. The police believed there to be drugs in the house, but no drugs were found on the premises, and it was later revealed that the address given to the SWAT team by officer Joseph Bini was the wrong one. Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas investigated the matter and cleared the officers involved with the raid on the grounds that Mena had pointed a gun and fired it at SWAT officers, although who fired first remains unknown. However, many have objected to the investigation's findings due to inconsistencies in the various officers' account of what happened. The American Civil Liberties Union, and others, have objected to the Denver Police Department's request for a no-knock raid and the Judge's decision to allow such a raid on the grounds that they failed to meet the criteria necessary for a no-knock raid.[9]

US Marine Jose Guerena was shot twenty-two times by a SWAT team planning to execute a search warrant. He retrieved a legally possessed rifle in response to sudden intruders, and the SWAT team opened fire on him before establishing any communication. The team later retracted its initial claims he had opened fire when it was established that Guerena had never fired and his safety was still on. The police refused to allow paramedics to access Guerena for more than hour, leaving Guerena to bleed to death, alone, in his own home. Members of the SWAT team subsequently hired legal defense and a large following of fellow Marines held a memorial service at his home with his widow.
[/quote]

This is silly, dangerous stuff. This is laziness in police work resulting in both, (ironically) less officer safety and less civilian safety, not a more effective method of securing convictions.

[Zeke129]

if you don't want your cops to look paramilitary maybe stop allowing your citizens to buy weaponry used by the actual military...

[Mr. Magoolachub]

[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;42468332]I explained why I chose to reply like I did. Your unwavering devotion to being unnecessarily pedantic to the point of sanctimony aside, note I did say that they're "almost directly," meaning, not [i]quite[/i] directly, but close enough. In fact, it appears your firearm legislation hasn't done anything at all, the violent states (and territories) are still violent. Sure, you don't have as many mass shootings, but you're still left with [i]actual violent crime[/i] and that's just the way things are everywhere, so yeah. Either way, Australia didn't have that many mass shootings to begin with, so you can't claim that firearm laws have made a dent in the short time they've been active.[/QUOTE]

A) "No I had good reason to be an asshole for no reason please believe!!!"
B) Okay allow me a rephrase, it's not anywhere close to being a direct trade, you are an idiot if you actually think it is 'almost direct'.
C) Wow gun laws didn't get rid of all violent crime ever? Well fuck I guess that a very large effect is totally worthless if it can't get rid of all violent crime ever, what sound logic. You know what? If we can't cure 100% of all diseases/illnesses/medical conditions at the same time, I think we should wait until we can before we allow anyone to be cured of any disease, yep, yep. Until we have methods to eliminate crime completely, we should stop having a police force or laws, it's just not worth it, you're right. I'm sure we'll come up with a way to eliminate crime completely soon, right? Also yes I can claim that firearm laws have made a dent in the 'short' time they've been active as statistics show very clearly exactly that.

[GarrettFox]

[QUOTE=Zeke129;42474352]if you don't want your cops to look paramilitary maybe stop allowing your citizens to buy weaponry used by the actual military...[/QUOTE]

Given that the point of the amendment is to place weapons capable of killing humans in the hands of citizens so as to always provide for an avenue out of oppression. And just look at our federal government, it is literally not functioning right now over a single bill to provide something not even approaching universal healthcare. Do you really blame any of us for not really putting a lot of faith in them?

[GarrettFox]

[QUOTE=The golden;42477492]Then why don't you guys ever do anything about it beyond showing up at the polls every four years? So many people are obviously not satisfied with their government yet they seem content to sit around and watch as it screws them over.[/QUOTE]

First because shooting government officials doesn't usually lead to a good time. As much as I like to scrawl "for a good time, shoot a senator in the dick" on bathroom stalls, I'm not actually being serious.

Second because we are heavily, HEAVILY, polarized as a nation. While you don't need more than half the population to take an active role in any form of insurrection, you do need a pretty good majority of the population to eventually agree with your ideals. Imagine if your country was half filled with Canadians, who are awesome, and half filled with fundamentalist assholes from some theocracy in the third world. The theocratic morons are called the Republican party and also make up the majority of our military on account of them being poor (not their fault generally) and too stupid to get real jobs (totally their fault).

[Taggart]

[QUOTE=Camundongo;42461005]To me, police units wearing camouflage or khaki/olive uniforms seems to be starting to blend how they want people to perceive them from police to paramilitary units, but that's just my view on it. If you perceive it to be meaningless then that's equally valid, since this is all about the police are perceived anyway.[/QUOTE] Police wearing khaki and olive has been a thing for a long time. When I see SWAT Teams in Olive/Khaki/Coyote/Brown gear I've always associated it with either FBI SWAT or local (typically Sheriff) SWAT Teams. Surplus flightsuits have been used for a while due to fire-resistant Nomex, in colours ranging from Olive to Navy to Tan. Propper and other tactical gear makers have been marketing all sorts of flat colours (including Sheriff Brown) to Police for years. I do think that it's a bit silly when SWAT teams are running around in military issued camo trying to look like ~tier one operators~, but I can't see anything wrong with them using commercial camo or flat colours that aren't Navy or Black, because they still look like cops.