Not quite the same. The chooser could just pick five movies he loves (say Fast and Furious parts 2-6) and the picker would be stuck.

Or they just spent their entire childhood and young adulthood coming to accepting the feminist ideal at the time which was that women and men are equal and that gender was a harmful social construct.

Wrongful arrest to be sure. But he was the one who was brandishing a firearm so it’s not completely shocking. If I pull a gun on some idiots, I’m not going to be shocked if I get arrested. I’m not going to like it, but kind of like a DV case, it’s not shocking that the cops arrest one of the parties just to keep…

Exactly. The only reason to control something is because it could be dangerous if people were allowed to access it. Like Ritalin or Xanax. Something that is easily abused or could harm you when taken in conjunction with something else. What could be harmful about this? Is it contraindicated for COD players?

So can I just walk over to your house and paintball the shit out of your car?

I never said I wanted to keep the status quo so perhaps that’s not a good way to argue against me. I’ll take care not to mis-characterize your opinions and things will go better if you do likewise.

Why don’t you let the grownups deal with this issue?

I agree but I’m talking about violence in a different way. Anything a cop does is done with a threat of violence. An arrest is violence.

Our civilian population are the ones living by the sword. Gun ownership and lack of registration are so out of line with everywhere else in the world I have trouble expressing it.

Sounds like we agree. There is no country like our country when it comes to gun ownership and a lack of registration. Not even close. Not even remotely close. Hundreds of millions of unregistered guns. If every man, woman, and child held an unregistered firearm in their hands, we’d still have enough unregistered guns…

I’m not sure you understand how people end up in custody. A detective does the investigation and then a warrant is issued. Who serves the warrant? Cops. Most warrants aren’t served. They just float out there until an officer bumps into the person. That’s why you traffic ticket takes so long, they are checking your…

Can we agree that one thing that could help address this issue would be having better cops? That having a better class of person become cops would be a good thing. Not just military wash-outs and gun nuts. But strong, kind, and smart people who care and are effective at their jobs??

Yes, it’s a ridiculous thing to suggest.

Police aren’t immoral. They are a necessary evil. Hobbes defined the state as that which holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in a given area. The police is the primary way through which the state exerts violence on it’s people.

Absolutely. The reality is, no matter how just a protest, no matter how well behaved the bulk of the protestors are, protests are different things. With social media and cell phones and all that, they have become a magnet for all manner of things that protests of old did not have.

I like data as much as the next guy, but how do these numbers stack up with gun ownership percentages. We have trigger happy cops because we have trigger happy civilians. Compare firearm murder rates and numbers of cops killed in the line of duty as well.

Well, of course crime rates when down. With no police, no one is going to get arrested. That doesn’t mean crime went down. Just the rate of arrests and convictions.

And having a lawyer call the cops to surrender said cocaine does not mean you didn’t possess it. If all he wanted to do was get the cocaine off the street, sure, have a lawyer surrender it anonymously.

Not on these facts. Recently purchased car with bricks of cocaine in a hidden compartment. Calling the cops was the right and safe thing to do. It’s not like the guy even knew what was in the bricks. Only that it was likely drugs of some kind as it was hidden in a secret compartment. He’s not weighing it, he’s not…

I’m a lawyer and I don’t know what you mean by “felony arrest.” Cops are not prosecutors. They can only arrest and book. They can’t charge and they certainly can’t convict.