Quote:
Originally Posted by Triple_R
In fairness to GundamFan0083, I saw the pictures he put up before, and why police officers need that much heavy duty hardware and guns and even tanks is a bit beyond me.
Yeah, exactly who are they going to war with? You only need this much armament if you're actually going to war with a serious oppositional force. You certainly don't need anything remotely close to this to take down a lone wolf. If this is to deal with the Timothy McVeighs and Adam Lanzas of the world, it's a bit much. 
Now, it's quite possible, even likely, that this is just standard issue US government "go REALLY big, or go home" sort of thinking where "too big to fail" is nothing less than a philosophy on life itself. But when you have police officers going around like that, it's going to cause paranoia if they're dealing with anything short of hundreds of people rioting and burning buildings down. |
Well, to me, it's more of an issue of principle. We protect important officials with weapons, and we protect banks with weapons. And certainly these things could be abused. A guard could easily go crazy and shoot them all.
So if we don't let people protect themselves with weapons, it's sorta implying that elected officials and money (banks) are more important than a citizen's own life.
Now, of course there are reasonable limits. We don't need tanks to defend our own homes, but as you suggested, the need for that kind of armament for the authorities is a bit hard to comprehend.
Anyhow, just feel free to VM me, since this topic exploded in our faces a few weeks ago, and will likely be pruned here.