All immaterial. centac. The "law" remains a stupid, pointless and unenforceable regulation. A government flunky happened to get an eyefull this time and wanted everyone to see how studious he is about his job.
The guy in question, of course, has to be stupid according to you defenders of the legalist staus-quo. Fact is most likely he carries more than a cop and simply doesn't think about the thing being there. Of course this likely possibility has already been noted in this thread...and conspicuously ignored in favor of continuing to call the victim here(the man with the legal firearm) stupid. Hey, JohBT, is that better than calling the enforcers thugs?
Also noteworthy is the avoidance of the subject of blind enforcement of various laws and then the jumping on at the mention of Parks, a "weak link" in the discussion. I suppose, though, that nobody is supposed to notice these kinds of lapses.
Fine, I'm going to use this thread to say this, and I'll repeat some variant of it everytime a citizen disobeys a stupid law and the Government Contingent rushes in to defend the arrest from now on:
Cops are civilians with usually minimal additional training and very specific additional arrest powers. They are exactly proportional to the rest of the population in stupidity, brilliance, arrogance, corruption, pettiness, honor, strength and weakness, etc. They are no more deserving of respect or submission based on the job they are paid to do than is a school teacher or a business owner. Respect is earned by an individual, not bought as a group purchase with a badge or a position.
Likewise laws are made by elected officials,
very often independent of or in direct contravention to the will of the people(or as a benefit of their ignorance) and or of the Constitution and BoR who are no smarter, better educated, noble, honorable or deserving of respect than the average man or woman on the street. Thus they make just as many mistakes and do just as many deeds for no more reason than personal advancement in some form as any other person.
As such, many laws are wrong. Many laws have no reason to exist and many of those that do have reason are so poorly crafted as to be dangerous in their ambiguity. Why? Because ordinary people with ordinary understanding and ordinary and often less than noble motivations are charged with their enforcement. There is no arguing with this reality in any logical way. It's just part of the Human condition.
As such, rushing in to defend every law or every LEO everytime people post something absurd for no other reason than "it's a law" or "he's a cop" is not helping relations between Citizens and Citizens employed as police. Look at each instance. Look at each person, then think before we get to see the usual defense. In this case we have a law abiding person who violated a stupid and pointless law which is already in the process of being modified to varying degrees. There was obviously no violent intent nor even suspicion of such. The firearm didn't stay in the building. There is no "crime", only a violation of a pointless piece of legislation.
And yet the "law" was enforced. A man's life now gets trashed. The State gets to take one more small step on the road of intimidation. A cop does something pointless because it's easier than thinking about it. And best of all, we all sit here and call people stupid and thuggish and further draw the line in the sand between cops and Citizens when there is no difference at all.
I'm tired of it. Tired of being dissed for speaking out about things. Tired of the cop bashing as well, believe it or not. But as long as the Us vs Them mentality endures we're going to keep having these encounters, from fairly mild such as this to user-banning brawls as has happened here and elsewhere before. It's getting not only very old, but very dangerous. Armed camps are not a wise goal to be working towards here.
The law is not a unified front or wall without holes. Police are not "the good guys". Citizens are not stupid. We're all the same and we've created a system that reflects us: Grand and flawed and often wrong or misinterpreted and often amazingly right all at the same time. Anyone who can't catch the nuances really needs to just stop and give it all a rest for a while.
Hmm, damn, I think I just had a rant...
