the govt. has both authority and responsibility. and again when you can provide a rational argument for why it's a BAD idea for snipers at the super bowl, get back to me.
It's a bad idea because it's a walking -- or sitting, as the case may be -- gun safety violation (let's not even pretend that thing doesn't get pointed at people. I've seen this sort of sniper do just that before).
It's a bad idea because of the unrealistic expectations of government capability it encourages in the minds of the people.
It's a bad idea because it's furtherance of the insidious tendency of government to spend too much money trying to do too much in too many places at once, and of the willingness of the people to condone and expect such behavior.
It's a bad idea because it's furtherance of the regularization of police use of military tactics, equipment, mindset, and ideology (don't even try to deny this one, Mr. Super-Bowl-is-Warfare), which is itself a bad idea because the police become equivalent to a standing army, and standing armies are
dangerous to liberty in times of peace.
It's a bad idea because the tactic is unrealistic, impractical (get real), and unnecessary, and security theater at the expense of actual individual security is itself a bad idea (see 9/11).
It's a bad idea because it's a known quantity, a needlessly expensive and principle form of security, and yet one which only addresses a ridiculously tiny (and implausibly action-filmic) subset of the threat model.
It's a bad idea because as long as the people rely on government to maintain a monopoly on security (or even provide most of it), safety suffers due to government inefficacy, and the people remain complacent in accepting the inexorable exchange of liberty for "security".
there is no apologia here. i am as fierce a critic of police misconduct as anybody.
I'll take your word for it.
and cops are citizens too. it is fallacious to set up a false dichotomy of citizens and cops. cops are citizens too
It is fallacious to imply that the police officer's status as a citizen enables in him the same claim to right
against conditions of employment that he or any other citizen deserves
against criminal prosecution by government.
A person has a right to carry a firearm. But a person also has (and by extension, the people have) the right to require employees not do so on the job as a condition of employment. Obviously, the people can demand as much of their government.
There is no "false dichotomy" between employees and non-employees of the state when the issue at hand is employment by the state and any conditions it may entail.
and fortunately, most intelligent rational citizens have no problem with snipers at the super bowl.
"Most intelligent rational citizens" watch the news on TV.
