Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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ACAB, first of all. However, and please bear with me;
I remember very vividly the video of a cop in Brooklyn minding his own damn business in his cruiser, probably eating a doughnut, when some dude walked up to his open window and blew his brains out. So how much time does that guy's partner have to radio HQ and request the weapon be unlocked before he is also looking at a new breathing hole in his skull?
I do agree that not nearly every cop should have lethal weapons. The temptation to go for it when frightened is just too high, especially for the type of people that tend to become cops in the US. However, having them remotely locked and requiring explicit permission also entirely defeats their unfortunately very real excuse for being out there in the first place. Let them all have tasers and batons as that's far more than enough for the vast majority of interactions as you pointed out, but to have the one lethal option perpetually out of reach even when its available and in that one in ten thousand case where it is actually required? Not entirely sure I agree there.
And just to be sure, I haven't forgotten OWS, so NYPD can choke on an entire bag of dicks one at a time and I'll sit back and watch sipping on an Arizona.
what does that have to do with being a cop though? plenty of civilians face that reality every single day and we're just supposed to deal with it.
that's really just a 'shit happens' scenario that just happens to involve the police.
it would make more sense to examine why this is an everyday reality in the USA and take steps to fix the underlying issue.
but, you know...even when a problem doesn't involve the constitution you aren't allowed to fix it. we're the best, don't question it.
I loathe the way things are in this country. Please don't put words in my mouth to the opposite effect. I don't own a firearm and veyy deliberately choose not to.
However, you go ahead and convince cowboy hat wearing rednecks with more pickup trucks than teeth that the system is fucked and their guns are part of the problem.
And adding barriers to voting is also very obviously not the answer either. Its not that I don't want to change the system or think it can't or shouldn't improve. I'm living inside the shit hole. I smell it every day.
There's also still reality, and we must all accept it like it or not. Decidedly not here.
How many times have cops been murdered like that? And how many innocent people have they murdered?
Right, which is why one in fifty cops gets to keep a gun. To hunt down the psycho who thinks that's a good idea and come home afterwards for doing what his job actually is as per the social contract.
I can hate cops as they are today but still want for the actual safety of the public through the proven institution of "policing." No, not the glorified slave-catchers American cops are, but real police.