Gun law

The primary duty of policemen around the world is to protect the public. Their job is to prevent or solve crimes, to keep order and to safeguard the communities in which they function. The United States ought to be no exception to this basic rule. Yet it is an astonishing fact that in the course of this year, American cops have gunned down and killed almost 1,000 people. Clearly some of the dead were armed criminals who posed a threat to the law officers and to the public around them. When someone is pointing a gun at a policeman, there is generally only one obvious reaction if that policeman has drawn his own weapon. Even so, before they fire, police can often be heard yelling warnings for armed men to put down their guns. When that does not happen, the suspect is shot. But is America such a lawless society that almost 1,000 individuals should be shot dead and several thousand others shot and injured, sometimes seriously? And what about the cases where the suspect shot dead is found afterwards to have been unarmed? This week a 73-year-old Hispanic man who was suffering from dementia was shot dead in a California driveway. Law officers had been called when a neighbor reported a suspicious individual with a gun in the early hours of the morning. It was dark. The police officer who arrived took no chances. He fired repeatedly at the suspect. In defense of the police, there are always going to be circumstances where the balance of probabilities dictates that a weapon should be fired, but it turns out that that balance was wrong. Tragic errors are inevitable. But there are those who are now arguing that it is the number of errors that is actually turning into a tragedy. The “Black Lives Matter” campaign understandably chooses to focus on the death of African-Americans at the hands of law officers or in police custody. But by isolating one part of the problem, it could be argued that this pressure group is obscuring the wider issue. As long as Americans are enabled under the US Constitution to own and carry weapons almost everywhere in the country, law officers will understandably be considering the possibility that they themselves could be confronted with lethal force. Yet, in the last 30 years, the number of policemen and women has more than doubled. There are now some 900,000 law officers of various kinds. Interestingly, over the same period, in real terms, the number of police killed on duty has dropped by 75 percent. This demonstrates a disconnect somewhere. Some suspect it may be a question of inadequate training. Others suggest that law officers have become victims of the myths perpetrated about their job by the entertainment industry. Still others suggest that among young officers in particular, there is a sense of unreality engendered by familiarity with violent shoot-‘em-up games. Moreover, President Obama has deplored the increasing militarization of law enforcement, with little difference between army and police bullet proof uniforms and armored vehicles save their color. Such levels of protection also serve to shield police officers from remembering that their primary duty is to the public. Secure behind their Kevlar armor, they look to their buddies for reinforcement against “the enemy” outside, except that that “enemy” consists of the very people they are supposed to be serving.