How to respond to an anti that says we should “rely on the police” for protection.

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How to respond to an anti that says we should “rely on the police” for protection.
Call 911 and Domino's at the same time. See who gets there first.

Or more seriously, get a stopwatch and run from your front door to your bedroom ... do you think the police can get there faster than that?

Another experiment, get a whiffle bat and tell your friend that you're going to say "GO" and they have to pull out their cell phone and dial 411 (don't want to dial 911 when there's no emergency) and the call has to connect before you hit them in the head with the whiffle bat.
 
For evidence, point out something like the L.A. Riots or New Orleans; police stood by while people looted stores.
Hell, at least one of them was caught on camera looting a Wal-Mart herself.
 
How to respond to an anti that says we should “rely on the police” for protection.
I have not read all the responses and this has probably already been touched on, but here's an exercise I did with my liberal, anti ,tree hugging niece

Sitting at my mother's kitchen table I handed her a water gun and a cell phone
I stood in the kitchen about 20 feet away with some kind of wet sponge that I told her was a rock

When I said go
She was to use the item that she thought would most effectively protect her from me and my rock.

Thinking that I had not realized that my BIL, a deputy from the neighboring county, was on the front porch she picked the cell phone to call him and ended up with a wet head before he even answered.
I told her the water represented her blood

An hour later her 13 year old daughter came in and I tried the same experiment on her
I ended up with the front of my shirt wet before I got three feet towards her

My niece is probably still trying to figure out what I meant when I said it was a good thing Darwinism isn't retroative
 
Ask her why she keeps a fire extinguisher in the kitchen when there's a fire department station just up the road.
 
Here's the hypothetical I gave to my college roommate blissninny:

"What if you walked into your house one day and caught some 350 lb musclebob raping, beating, and torturing your mother? Would you want a gun to stop her from being harmed, or would you call the cops and hope your call went through before he pounded your teeth out and started raping, beating and torturing you?"

He took about 1/2 a second to respond "Yeah. I'd want a gun."

No excuses. No other hypotheticals. We'd watched 8 frat boys beat up some guy walking on the sidewalk 3 floors below our window the night before, so he was fresh off a dose of reality.
(and yes, I ran down the stairs to help the guy, but they had already beat him down and vamoosed.)
 
The police are not unreliable.
That's as unreasonable as a blanket statement that they ARE unreliable.

How "reliable" they are is entirely dependent upon where you live.

I live in Rocky River, Ohio. I consider the police here "reliable". By and large, they come relatively quickly when you call them, and don't commit crimes when they get there. That having been said, I'd be foolish to rely upon them for my personal safety, not because of malice on their part, but simply because it's almost guaranteed to be a physical impossibility for them to "protect" me in the time it takes someone to maim or murder me.

I'm from Chicago. I would NEVER call the Chicago PD if it could at all be avoided. Their history of criminal activity in just the last 6-8 months is heavily documented. I was a periodic spectator of their mis, mal and non-feasance while growing up in Chicago.

It's unreasonable to say all cops are bad. It's equally unreasonable to say they're all good.
 
Every homicide is a case where the police failed to protect someone.

It seems simple to me -- if there is a lot of violent crime, then clearly the police are failing badly, and I need a gun.

If there is not a lot of violent crime, then there is no reason to object to my having a gun.
 
The police are not unreliable.
I think for the most part they are reliable
You can usually rely on them to do a good job of investigating the crime after the fact

My wife was mugged a few months ago
From the time it happened to the time the guy was in cuffs was less than 15 minutes.
Not bad response time, they just had to wait for the crime to be committed before they could spring into action
 
>Quote:
>Are you suggesting that cucumbers are migratory?
>Not at all! They could be carried.

... by heavily laden swallows!

(sorry, just had to make the Monty Python reference)
 
"You have reached the 911 emergency line. All dispatchers are busy at the moment. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received...."
 
Anybody who expects "protection" from the Chicago PD is either Mayor Daley or insane.

What about all those people paying bribes to the CPD. I'm sure they're expecting some protection too.
 
Your search - "law enforcement, no legal obligation" - did not match any documents.

Try Google and
police + no legal responsibility
That entry yielded "about 2,350,000" hits.

The first hit, http://publicrights.org/Kennesaw/PoliceResponsibility.html yields

Police have no legal duty to respond and prevent crime or protect the victim. There have BEEN OVER 10 various supreme and state court cases the individual has never won. Notably, the Supreme Court STATED about the responsibility of police for the security of your family and loved ones is "You, and only you, are responsible for your security and the security of your family and loved ones. That was the essence of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the early 1980's when they ruled that the police do not have a duty to protect you as an individual, but to protect society as a whole."

"It is well-settled fact of American law that the police have no legal duty to protect any individual citizen from crime, even if the citizen has received death threats and the police have negligently failed to provide protection."

Sources:

7/15/05 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 04-278 TOWN OF CASTLE ROCK, COLORADO, PETITIONER v. JESSICA GONZALES, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS NEXT BEST FRIEND OF HER DECEASED MINOR CHILDREN, REBECCA GONZALES, KATHERYN GONZALES, AND LESLIE GONZALES
On June 27, in the case of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to individual police protection even in the presence of a restraining order. Mrs. Gonzales' husband with a track record of violence, stabbing Mrs. Gonzales to death, Mrs. Gonzales' family could not get the Supreme Court to change their unanimous decision for one's individual protection. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN FOLKS AND GOVERNMENT BODIES ARE REFUSING TO PASS THE Safety Ordinance.

(1) Richard W. Stevens. 1999. Dial 911 and Die. Hartford, Wisconsin: Mazel Freedom Press.
(2) Barillari v. City of Milwaukee, 533 N.W.2d 759 (Wis. 1995).
(3) Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir. 1982).
(4) DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
(5) Ford v. Town of Grafton, 693 N.E.2d 1047 (Mass. App. 1998).
(6) Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. 1981).
"...a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen..." -Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981)

(7) "What makes the City's position particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of NY which now denies all responsibility to her."
Riss v. New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579,293 N.Y.S.2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 806 (1958).

(8) "Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public."
Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)

New York Times, Washington DC
Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone By LINDA GREENHOUSE Published: June 28, 2005
The ruling applies even for a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.
 
How do you expect the police to be there right after you hang up the phone? What are you going to do, sit down with a criminal who would kill you without batting an eyelash and share a cup of coffee while the police take 5 minutes to come to your house?
 
It takes much less than a minute for someone to cut your throat with a razor, bifurcate your heart with an ax, bash in your brains with a baseball bat, or section you with a chainsaw. Expecting to be able to contact the police, explain your predicament, and have a police officer show up in time to prevent any of these outcomes requires that there be sufficient police on duty for a 1:1 ratio to exist between ordinary citizens/off duty police and on duty police.

At least, that's my reply to "...but the cops protect us from criminals so nobody needs a gun for that" argument. If someone can't understand that there's no reasoning with them.
 
What are you going to do, sit down with a criminal who would kill you without batting an eyelash and share a cup of coffee while the police take 5 minutes to come to your house?
If so, make espresso. That takes longer, and will buy you extra time.
 
What to tell this poor deluded lady:

http://www.non-violent.com/guntrol.htm

She seems to think that non-violent "weapons" are the way to go. Gee, I really like to piss off my attacker before I disable him/her, and not be prepared to follow with more force if necessary.
I'm actually more offended by this website than a lot of solid anti-gunnie websites. For several reasons:
A): The cutesy, multicolored, hard to read font and background made my eyes hurt and made me feel like I was teaching a kindergarten class, not talking about the subject of life-and-death.
B): She stated that guns' sole purpose is to kill every living thing on the planet. This is just wrong on all nine levels of Hell. Seriously. I'm sure the guy who first thought to put some gunpowder behind a weight and set it alight thought "Hey, I'm going to end life on this planet with this thing!". Right. Tell me another one. Then there's the worn out point that objects cannot be capable of murder, only people can.
C): She characterized us (gunnies) as people who delight in the killing of everything and who always are "shoot first, ask questions later" people. I have more empathy for people than a lot of my friends so that offends me.
D): Her head was in space.
-Nolo out.
 
Tell them something similar to what Hillary told General Patreaus:

"Sitting here listening to you tell me that people should wait for the cops to show up to defend their lives, requires the willing suspension of disbelief". ;)
 
Let them know that the Supreme Court has determined that Law Enforcement has "NO LEGAL OBLIGATION" to protect any individual. Then tell them to read, "Warren vs. District of Columbia", "DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services", "Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Department", "Freeman v. Ferguson".

Gonzales vs. the City of Castle Rock
 
Shoot first and ask questions later?

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Me: "So what does "venti" mean?"

Starbucks' dude: "Help me! I've been shot! Please God, someone help me!"

Just does not seem all that efficient to me.
 
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