Understood!

You have a right in self-ownership. That would include your right to firearms among numerous other rights. In fact-those rights are so numerous, the framers of the Constitution made it clear-please review the 9th Amendment, MagicDog.

"Most of them have no idea what the difference is, assuming that rights mean nothing but government entitlements based on some vague feeling of what people should have, and therefore have no means for deliberately confusing them in propaganda to others." True. I think it is interesting that the conservative leaning posters on this topic completely do not see which state the officer is from and his exercising of "rights" those state citizens (mostly) do not have. Of course, if I use "law and order" arguments against law and orderers, they will feel uncomfortable. If you are not guilty of anything, you should not need a firearm. Ultimately, it is the same argument. you should not need a firearm to protect yourself from ANY police or govt official.

you both nail this.

+1, but god-given vs natural is not the flashpoint here.

perhaps it is because I travel near and over the southern border a fair amount. However, in my former state of Colorado-well, police are an ever present and annoying presence. Doesn't feel like they're helpful, feels like they are trying to catch me breaking the law for revenue-not for actual potential harm to society (an amorphous concept with no real aggrieved party).

yes. the policeman lives in a state that he is well aware severely constrains the citizen from owning firearms. He used a bully pulpit to...bully. Now if he had said that in Alabama, it would be significantly less provocative

wow. we disagree. What is essential here-is not his right to defend his family or his inflammatory bully pulpit(which he has). It is is confusion between his career and his individual rights. They are different-especially in his state. In his state, most citizens cannot have a firearm. But he has one, issued for his job. So he amorphously threatens something the average citizen cannot. That is the point of the author. NOt your individual moral right to have firearms.

that is not the confusion point

My question is "why the paranoia?" I've driven for over 50 years, in most of the U.S. and foreign countries, and never unduly hassled. I've been stopped, but never abused, probably because I've always shown the officer the courtesy due a professional, even when I disagreed with the stop.

That being said, do I think there's an overuse of special tactical teams? Absolutely. Part of that is due to the fact that lone officers are sent on patrol, when in past years, they traveled in pairs. If a lone officer runs into a problem, the only possible response is to call for backup, which is too often heavily armed SWAT. Maybe someone should rethink the comparative cost of more less heavily armed officers versus fewer, military style cops.

"His comment about having his gun ready for people who feel they can't breathe or their lives matter is asinine. It sounds like he's saying he's ready to kill people not in self-defense." > That was what I had a problem with, too, because it sounds like a threat. This is especially problematic given his position as a police officer and the power over other people that goes with that. It really sounds like he has a chip on his shoulder, and possibly a vendetta against certain people in society.

I believe I am loosely quoting AR here and agree 100%. "No one has a "right" to anything." The term implies that someone owes you something. No one owes you anything just because you are both on earth at the same time.

Any form of coercion is wrong. The only excuse for the use of force is in self defense. When in a self defense situation it is rarely possible to choose the type of defense. Rather use whatever one has in order to survive. If all you have is a knife and the adversary has a gun, you are most likely going to lose, therefore it is best to be armed with the most lethal weapon available. This should work for both police and citizen. If the police are overly aggressive, for whatever reason, they are wrong and their attitude is more indefensible because they are trained (or should be) in how to respond to violence.

This was in "Reason"???!

I kinda agree with CircuitGuy and ewv. While I think that the cop is deliberately being inflammatory in his remarks, the substance of them: "I will defend myself and my family with lethal force." is right on point. And the fact that he mentions carrying his gun in the theatre should be a relief to the other folks watching the movie - if someone else goes berserk and starts shooting at Batman, then he is there to take out the joker.

I think that the article was poorly constructed and that the comment that the cop was not very intelligent was intended as an empty put-down.

What I think: The cop should shut up; Reason should have a talk with the article's author.

Jan

hey, doctor-every time I come back to the states, I feel immense stress at the police presence on the highways. It gets more obnoxious every year. In Colorado Springs, they now have signs all along the interstate that runs through town that say the state troopers are watching-do this, do that-they're ticketing-I don't remember threats like this when I was growing up. I once overheard a local police officer who was a swat team member talking about an attempted capture of a known felon at a major intersection in the city. It was a multi-car pile up, swat swarming the intersection, the felon escaped. Lots of personal property damage and terrified motorists. Really?

It was a quote from the article, not khalling's statement. But ,the author didn't attack the cop as a fallacious argument, he said in passing that he didn't seem very intelligent (which may or may not be true), and then went on to observe the fact that liberals systematically confuse rights and government-granted privileges as what he thinks explains the cop's fuzzy terminology. That also may or may not be true of the cop, but he wasn't attacking a person and changing the subject as a logical fallacy, he was trying to come up with an explanation for why the cop used the terminology he did. The author implicitly relies on the reader knowing the difference between natural rights and government entitlements. Whether or not he understands Ayn Rand is a different question, but he didn't get that far.

The real and comprehensive problem, which we see over and over, is that even those who vaguely appeal to natural rights and loose language referring to rights as "god-given" often have no clue as to what rights are and why we identify and validate them as rights. "God did it" is not a meaningful explanation for any of it.

But the author also assumes that liberals are deliberately confusing natural rights with government entitlements, which gives them too much credit. Most of them have no idea what the difference is, assuming that rights mean nothing but government entitlements based on some vague feeling of what people should have, and therefore have no means for deliberately confusing them in propaganda to others. Conservatives who don't know how to explain natural rights but appeal to them in slogans about "god-given" are not helping the general lack of knowledge.

The lack of understanding of natural rights is most likely the cause of the cop's formulation rather than liberals trying to confuse him on a subject they don't understand themselves.

I chalk this up to the stress most law enforcement members must be feeling at this time. Being the target of verbal, psychological, and physical abuse simply for wearing the uniform has to take its toll. I remember the feelings of frustration and maintaining my composure when the subject of angry outbursts at the military during the Vietnam era, and I can only imagine the added pressure of being flooded with abusive language on social media today.

The department did the correct thing by giving him time to cool down and regain control. I also assume he's being given instruction on appropriate public statements and useful methods of maintaining his composure.

Before getting too judgmental and self-righteous, we should try to imagine our own reaction if our children told us they'd been threatened on social media posts. How many can honestly say they'd remain cool and collected?

Khalling is using the fallacy of “Changing the Subject and Attacking the Person”. After attacking the Cop as "not that intelligent" and then the "systematic effort in this country by the establishment to confuse rights and privileges (another attack on the person and at the same time changing the subject).
The question is “If you have the choice between your life and the death of another then which do you choose. AR has addressed this subject many times and the answer involves the Liberal philosophy of advocating Self Sacrifice (be happy to pay your taxes and let the government make you a slave to the state). Should you let yourself and your family suffer harm from an attacker or take out the attacker?

if this is what he believes so be it. his mistake was to publically state the belief. I can only assume even in CA. if he or his family were attacked while he was off duty and he did kill the threat nobody would see him wrong. He has become his own worst enemy.

I believe the God I believe in inspired the writing of the Constitution. If you don't, you are free to believe what you believe. I'm easy.
Self-defense is more about a natural survival instinct shared with animals. If you think that's not God-given, I'm still easy.
I'm a Constitutional Libertarian with a high degree of tolerance. And proud of it.
After Christmas dinner, some relatives and myself spoke of many things last evening. One thing briefly mentioned was a stupid thing to protest-- a cop shooting a punk who was trying to shoot him, regardless of race, creed or color.
Like my grown daughter said, "If I have a gun and someone points a gun at me, I'm gonna shoot."
My son would agree. He is always packs a pistol. (We live in the free state of Alabama).

This gentleman, using the term very loosely, is confused and has been properly indoctrinated in Progressive ideology. My right to protect my family, friends, myself and strangers if need be comes from my existence. True they may be from "God" or a "Creator" if one believes. I do not and will not boast that as sometimes it pays NOT to advertise.

I agree technically, but "god-given" could mean "natural",, the same way I take "endowed by their creator"... not literally meaning that a creator anointed us.

I naively read the "god given" "law appointed" thing to mean that the right to self-defense is a natural human right and that the law where he lives recognizes that natural human right. I agree with that idea.

His comment about having his gun ready for people who feel they can't breathe or their lives matter is asinine. It sounds like he's saying he's ready to kill people not in self-defense.

The part about self-defense being a human birthright recognized by the law seems right to me though. What's wrong with this?

Not only is he confused about the difference between rights and privilege as it relates to government or establishment propaganda, he can't understand that difference as long as he believes that some supernatural entity 'gave' him rights. If his rights are 'given' to him by his god in the first place, then it would only make sense to him that his government could also 'give' him rights. His justifications for the use of force will always flow from that initial belief in a gift from his god as anointing him, a special purpose and place in life.

Yet another example of why the police do not deserve to be trusted to own tools of war or to have the power of civil forfeiture.