Police Power
Ash said:
Today, we would feel the same way if all cops decided to carry subguns slung over their shoulders. It happens in Europe but the US Citizen would have a cow if all the guards at the airports, if all state troopers, and if all sheriffs approached them with an Uzi or MP-5 hanging off their shoulder.
While I like that traditional American attitude toward police power, with the brainless, gutless, pacified sheep-like boobs that populate our nation today, I'm not so sure people would object. I think as long as it was
somebody wearing a uniform, many sheeple today would be at ease seeing somebody carrying a machine gun. The 2nd Amendment exists not to protect something as trivial as hunting rights but
to protect the people from the state, from army and police power. Yeah....So much for that concept.
I remember the first time I came to Europe I was rather surprised to see many of the Italian police armed with submachine guns (though I was not, like many of my companions, freaked out). A few months ago I was in Switzerland and there was a Swiss cop walking around Zurich airport with an MP5 -- first time I had seen one in person actually.
Of course, Europe has much less violent crime than the USA, so what gives? The answer is that while police in the US are (in theory) servants of the community, police elsewhere in the world, while protecting the community, are fundamentally
instruments of state power and are armed accordingly.
This was off topic, but I guess since I'm the OP it's my prerogative