Shouldn’t the Police Have a “Do Not Fire Unless Fired Upon” Rule?

Dees Illustration

Eric Blair
Activist Post

I’m bordering on hating the police state, and I’m the type of person who wishes away all forms of hate. It seems like there’s a new police abuse story everyday worse than the last.

It’s gotten to where I despise watching, posting, and sharing police brutality videos. I may stop clicking on them altogether for the same reason I don’t watch horror movies: you can’t un-see something, and I don’t enjoy knowingly exposing myself to fear or hate.

In one sense I feel a duty to inform people of the growing tyranny, but in another sense I think it feeds exactly what the establishment wants — outrage and retaliatory violence — to justify its own brutality. The swelling police state is like a fat bully on the playground who pokes you over and over again with a stick until you’ve finally had enough and rip the stick out of his hand and beat the shit out of him with it. The government seems to be bullying citizens into responding in kind.

According to a new report, “Since 9/11, about 5,000 Americans have been killed by U.S. police officers, which is almost equivalent to the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq.”

At this point, I could really spice up this article with individual examples of police abuse and some explicit videos, but I’m not going to. If you are reading this then you already know they’re out there including on this site. Most importantly, you understand it is a top-down vision that guides the abuse, not a few bad apples. Not anymore.

When faced with a “threat” the shoot-first, shoot-to-kill policy is now taught to police and other national law enforcement. Do you remember all the old war movies and cop shows? Marching orders were always “do not fire unless fired upon” to position themselves as noble good guys hoping to avoid killing, but ready to defend.

We should return the country’s lawmen to this policy. You take fire, you can fire back. If not, keep the safety on. Call it gun control for law enforcement. All it would take is a very simple law or even just the vision to implement this through public pressure.

In our current court system, the police are always given the benefit of the doubt in any mistaken shooting case. After all, they’re supposed to be the good guys. But, remember, good guys don’t shoot first even if “threatened”. Who said being a cop wasn’t dangerous? Sorry, cops, but that’s the sacrifice you must make for the honor to patrol a civilized society at our expense. You may one day take a bullet, although it’s highly unlikely, but you will still be the good guy.  Probable cause, a warrant, and even a threat of deadly force is not enough reason to strike first.

If you’re like me, you’re past the outrage phase of the police state but don’t know what else to do for solutions besides informing people of what’s happening. Petitions and politics are almost useless. However, all campaigns can be used to inform people so they’re never futile.

I propose that we turn our rage into crowdsourcing a simple law that would prohibit domestic law enforcement from firing the first bullet in any dispute. We, the people, write the actual law and lobby for it. Pressure someone like Rep Justin Amash to introduce it in Congress to bring some publicity to it.

I don’t necessarily care if it ever becomes a “law,” I just want to make enough noise so the first thing everyone thinks when they watch a police abuse video is “cops should never be allowed to strike first” in any situation. Police should not be a strike force. Those that are should be shunned and replaced.

As Americans, we were promised the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The pursuit to Happiness is largely subjective, but the root and mechanics to success have largely eroded this right. Meanwhile, there are very few individual Liberties remaining. But you would think we can must up some energy to preserve our right to Life for goodness sake.

Something must be done to stop police abuse or it will boil over into more violence.  At this point I’m willing to try anything to peacefully end the police state.

Let me know your thoughts and how you would write this law.

Oh, for those of you not aware of or outraged by the police state yet, go watch this video and come back to comment your ideas to stop this.

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