Arming the populace? Having a bunch of untrained people police their own neighborhoods sounds like a recipe for disaster. Trump supporters and racists would be watching neighborhoods with lethal weapons.
I'm not saying that Trump supporters should not be able to, but the anti-police crowd seem to not think far enough ahead to realize that taking power away from police and giving it to the people means giving it to people that they see as political and ideological enemies as well.
Edit: would someone like to dispute this instead of just downvoting? I'm trying to discuss in good faith; this seems to be a real problem with the idea of arming the populace: inevitably there will be citizens who have different ideas on self-policing their community. Would we only allow people with socially acceptable ideologies to have arms?
In rural areas the population is already armed, even for the purpose of hunting and protecting the farms from animals damaging crops and livestock. If I read the numbers correctly the state with the least regulated gun policies is the second most safe in USA.
Also Trump supporters don't equal Pro 2A. Most of my USA based colleagues are Pro 2A, including the Biden supporters, and most are not Trump fans.
Also most people that I know with gun permits in my country (extremely rare) are more knowledgeable on laws than most policemen; same for gun training, we do train policemen in the range and we see that.
In a neighborhood where people are armed there is no need to patrol on the streets. Guess what is the place around the gun range that is never robbed? The gun range. People don't take risks, they pick the easy targets, gun-free zones are perfect targets for people that ignore the laws.
I have firearms, and I would use them to kill credible threats to myself and my family. You seem to be saying that makes me a "Trump supporter and racist". I am neither of those things. Several of my neighbors might fit that description, but all of my neighbors are armed.
>Many Trump supporters, and racists, are extremely well-armed in the USA.
Yet they are not bestowed with the power of self-policing, and are still subject to a higher authority which regulates what is and isn't acceptable defense of self or property. Who would regulate their behavior? Instead of a small subset
of racists having power, you would have ALL racists having power. I think they would love to have the ability to police their own communities without having to go through the trouble of becoming a police officer. There would be George Zimmerman to type situations happening every other day since they know police are not coming. Last year 9 black and 19 white unarmed people were shot by police out of a population of 328 million people. Any number may be unacceptable, but that number would certainly be orders of magnitude higher if untrained citizens who do not have the protocols that police must follow are given the power to self-police.
I'm not saying that Trump supporters should not be able to, but the anti-police crowd seem to not think far enough ahead to realize that taking power away from police and giving it to the people means giving it to people that they see as political and ideological enemies as well.
Edit: would someone like to dispute this instead of just downvoting? I'm trying to discuss in good faith; this seems to be a real problem with the idea of arming the populace: inevitably there will be citizens who have different ideas on self-policing their community. Would we only allow people with socially acceptable ideologies to have arms?