Publicola

This is rich. In California a lot of support for various gun control laws have come from the police unions. Well, they're not happy about the recently passed law that requires magazine disconnect safety's on all firearms sold in Cali. Here's why:

"Davis' bill exempts cops from mandatory use of the new 'safety' features. However, even this exemption creates new dangers for police.
'Governor Davis' bill ... exposes California law enforcement and taxpayers to additional liability risk,' says the Sept. 25 LEAA press release. 'The law officially defines guns lacking these features as 'unsafe guns.' As a result, nearly every single handgun used by California law enforcement officers will be officially defined as an 'unsafe handgun,' a notion certain to be exploited in lawsuits involving police use of firearms.'
In short, California sheriffs and police chiefs must now choose between issuing mechanically unreliable guns to their officers or issuing guns deemed legally 'unsafe'. "

The article this excerpt comes from is called "Gray Davis' Cop-Killing Gun Law"

Well perhaps I'd have some sympathy for the cops if they hadn't been supportive of damn near every victim disarmament measure that affected California civilians.

The thing that burns me up is the whole article is bitching that police officers are beign subjected to the same treatment us mere peasants have been. A nationwide concealed carry for cops only bill is stalled in congress, the magazine disconnect law poses problems for the officers on the street. What about the friggin' civilian who has to put up with these bullshit laws & more every friggin' day?

& to top it all off:

"What is next?' asks Lott. 'Banning guns carried by on-duty officers?"

In places where mere citizens are prohibited from carrying arms, damn right. If it's such a safe world that the peasants don't need weapons, then the agents of government shouldn't need to carry them either.

The way I feel about cops is this: they're no different than the public at large. A small perecentage of them are really good people, a small perecentage are really bad people & the remainder fall to varying degrees in between. However they have been set up as a privileged class. They carry arms in places where us common folk cannot & carry weapons & ammunition that are prohibited from the common folk's possession.

This is mainly due to factors other than the cop on the street wanting to feel special. Unions are notorious for promoting these privileged class measures even when they're opposed by the cop on the beat. But the fact remains that they are treated as a privileged class. This is soley because of their function. Nope, it's not to control violent criminals, its to enforce laws. Those laws may be good or bad. Most cops I have met say its not their place to judge the law, only to enforce it. But motivations only affect blame & credit, not results. So untill the cop on the beat refuses to carry a gun where they are prohibited for everyone else, or at the very least refuses to use a brand new 15 round magazine because the mere peasants are denied them, then I won't feel much sympathy for them when compared to a common person who has to endure these prohibitions.

As for the argument that cops are in harms way more often than non law enforcement officers.... puh-leez. Cops make up a fraction of our population. Further cops are only fractionally involved in situations where violent, dangerous crimes are happening. They mainly show up after the fact & attempt to apprehend the suspect. Most of the time the suspect gets away.

Civilians who are not in law enforcement on the other hand make up a large percentage of the population. & they are more frequently involved in situations where violent, dangerous crimes are occuring. Remember that small percentage of violent confrontations that cops are faced with? The flip side of that is there are a greater number of violent confrontational crimes that happen when cops aren't around. Since we are dividing things up into two groups - cops & non cops - who do you think is around for most of those violent crimes? That's right. Non law enforcement officers.

Non law enforcement officers are subject, as a whole, to a greater risk of being around a violent, confrontational crime than cops as a whole are. This will always be the case until the cops outnumber the non-cops. So arguments that cops as a group lead more dangerous lives & require more protection don't convince me that we should treat them any different.

Further, even if the odds were in favor of cops being involved in more potentially dangerous situations that in no way means that non law enforcement officers should forsake the ability to protect themselves, even if the occasion for doing so may be much rarer.

But non cops are the target of most violent confrontational crimes. Therefore non cops should be as well armed as cops.

& don't get me started on cops who wear arms but arrest people for merely possessing them. That is hypocrisy in action.

So yes, disarm the cops where the people are disarmed & place the same restrictions on them that the people have on them. Or there is a better solution: stop preventing the people from exercising their Right to Arms & let the cops & non cops carry what they wish.

But don't try to invoke pity in a disarmed peasant for an elite class who suffer from a fraction of the restrictions I am faced with.