[jdeegan]

It's hard to believe there is anyone out there so stupid as the driver. He must have slept through his drivers ed classes. The ritual for getting a traffic ticket is something everyone should know. The officer was well trained. I would have tazered the jerk until he shut up.

[blackshoe]

mikeh, on Nov 23 2007, 03:59 PM, said:

But in a perfect world, no cops would be shot by pissed-off drivers at traffic stops, using a legally obtained, and carried handgun (or semi-automatic assault rifle).

That may be true. If, however, that is the sole criterion for a perfect world, I submit that we live in one.

Let me put it more bluntly: it never happened. If you have evidence otherwise, post it.

[rona_]

jdeegan, on Nov 24 2007, 01:13 AM, said:

It's hard to believe there is anyone out there so stupid as the driver.  He must have slept through his drivers ed classes.  The ritual for getting a traffic ticket is something everyone should know.  The officer was well trained.  I would have tazered the jerk until he shut up.

Hopefully you aren't a cop. The one I see in the video needs psychiatric help IMO. These are the people who are supposed to maintain law and order in the US. Scary thought.

[bid_em_up]

1eyedjack, on Nov 23 2007, 12:34 PM, said:

I've really got to get me one of those toys.

http://www.taser.com...S/Pages/C2.aspx

http://www.taser.com.../TASERX26C.aspx

Enjoy.

Actually, this is scarier to me than any police officer having a taser for use, but thats an issue for a different thread.

[1eyedjack]

bid_em_up, on Nov 24 2007, 06:29 PM, said:

Actually, this is scarier to me than any police officer having a taser for use

But it comes with a training certificate!

[gwnn]

bid_em_up, on Nov 24 2007, 07:29 PM, said:

1eyedjack, on Nov 23 2007, 12:34 PM, said:

I've really got to get me one of those toys.

http://www.taser.com...S/Pages/C2.aspx

http://www.taser.com.../TASERX26C.aspx

Enjoy.

Actually, this is scarier to me than any police officer having a taser for use, but thats an issue for a different thread.

"I will control my destiny"

That's probably a much much more malicious lie than "buy our detergent, it's intelligent". It makes me sick! ****!

[jtfanclub]

Quote

you don't have to sign, but signing doesn't indicate guilt...

Having been arrested for resisting arrest for not signing a ticket (and spending overnight in jail), you gotta sign.

If the officer was placing the guy under arrest, and if the guy then put his hand in his pocket, he should have been tasered. People should know better than that.

And I have no love for cops, believe me.

[cherdano]

I agree very much with Josh, I can't believe anyone could think this kind of aggression by an officer would be adequate.

I agree with Mike that this kind of incident is one of the many hidden costs of widespread gun ownership that the gun lobby refuses to realize.

[jtfanclub]

cherdano, on Nov 26 2007, 04:51 PM, said:

I agree very much with Josh, I can't believe anyone could think this kind of aggression by an officer would be adequate.

I can't imagine that people think that if you flee a cop the cop just has to stand there repeating "please put your hands behind your back".

The guy was disobeying orders, walking back to his car, and reaching into his pocket, maybe for keys, maybe for something else. What do you think an appropriate level of aggression would have been?

[cherdano]

jtfanclub, on Nov 26 2007, 04:23 PM, said:

cherdano, on Nov 26 2007, 04:51 PM, said:

I agree very much with Josh, I can't believe anyone could think this kind of aggression by an officer would be adequate.

I can't imagine that people think that if you flee a cop the cop just has to stand there repeating "please put your hands behind your back".

The guy was disobeying orders, walking back to his car, and reaching into his pocket, maybe for keys, maybe for something else. What do you think an appropriate level of aggression would have been?

It seems to me that the rest of the Western democratic world has a different view of the job of a police officer than most people in the USA. I don't mean this sarcastically at all, I will try to elaborate later.

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on Nov 26 2007, 04:32 PM, said:

Quote

you don't have to sign, but signing doesn't indicate guilt...

Having been arrested for resisting arrest for not signing a ticket (and spending overnight in jail), you gotta sign.

If the officer was placing the guy under arrest, and if the guy then put his hand in his pocket, he should have been tasered. People should know better than that.

And I have no love for cops, believe me.

i didn't know that, thanks... in any case, when a cop gives a person a lawful order it must be obeyed

[geller]

I don't know the law in Utah, but in almost every state the citation form has the words "not an admission of guilt" somewhere near the signature line. Signing is merely an acknowledgment that you received the citation and agree to appear in court to defend yourself (or pay a fine by mail). Not signing is an arrestable offense.

Looking at the video it appeared to me that the cop overreacted.

But I just heard a TV news report from the US (they broadcast excerpts from foreign news shows in Japan) saying that so far this year 175 cops have died in the line of duty (almost all shot), up from 140 last year (and there's still a month to go in 2007). So generally speaking, you can't blame cops for being a bit jumpy.

The obvious solution seems to get handguns out of the hands of the public, but this doesn't seem possible in the present poltical climate.... Too bad.

[blackshoe]

geller, on Nov 26 2007, 09:59 PM, said:

The obvious solution

... is not necessarily the best solution.

[mikeh]

blackshoe, on Nov 27 2007, 03:47 PM, said:

geller, on Nov 26 2007, 09:59 PM, said:

The obvious solution

... is not necessarily the best solution.

and the best solution for the thousands of gun related deaths (and injuries), annually, is....?

Oh, I forgot... guns don't kill people, people kill people..... except, of course, that it is far easier for most people to kill someone with a handgun than it is with most other weapons...heck, it is so easy that it is child's play.... as some parents learn every year.

[blackshoe]

That some parents are too stupid to keep their guns away from their kids - or teach the kids how to properly handle them and to respect what they can do - does not imply that the rest of the population should be denied their rights.

This is a complex issue - and from the tone of your post, Mike, I doubt anything I can say will affect your opinion. And vice versa.

[inquiry]

Well, mike is wrong about what kills people... It is not guns, and it is not people, it is bullets. A comedian had a skit about making bullets cost $10,000 a piece and then see what happens to drive-by shootings and the like. But really, the us needs some kind of enforcable and reasonable gun ownership laws.

[mikeh]

blackshoe, on Nov 27 2007, 06:08 PM, said:

That some parents are too stupid to keep their guns away from their kids - or teach the kids how to properly handle them and to respect what they can do - does not imply that the rest of the population should be denied their rights.

This is a complex issue - and from the tone of your post, Mike, I doubt anything I can say will affect your opinion. And vice versa. 

Well, it really comes down to whose rights are we speaking of?

In most of the world, the concept of individual rights, while recognized to varying degrees, is tempered by a much greater regard for societal interests than is popular in the US. I like to think that we Canadians have a society that is every bit as free, in meaningful ways, than the US...

And the truth is that any balancing of individual rights against societal rights is a complex matter. Not only is there a continuum or spectrum of opinion, rather than two distinct camps, but many members of one camp hold views on specific issues that seem at odds with the main theme of their camp.

Thus proponents of the supremacy of individual rights are often strong advocates of a harsh penal justice system, including heavily armed police, mandatory jail terms, limited parole, and the death penalty...all of which require a strong government presence and role. They are usually anti-abortion: they claim the right to tell a woman what to do. They are often proponents of amendments to the constitution to ban flag-burning (which surely is a matter of freedom of individual expression), banning certain political parties, supporting the Patriot Act and its invasion of civil liberties, and so on. While proponents of societal interests will argue that a woman has the right to choose: that society's interest in the unborn child is trumped by individual freedom, and so on.

Furthermore, it is always possible to engage in pushing an opponent's argument to conclusions that are unfair.

Thus, and I stress that I am merely doing this to show how it could be done, not because I for one moment think Blackshoe feels this way:

My opinion is that the rights of the people killed or wounded by privately owned handguns in the US should trump the rights of the (far greater) number of perfectly innocent and responsible gun owners: take away their handguns and what have they lost, in comparision to the restoration of life and health to the victims of stolen, carelessly stored, or owned-by-irrational-people handguns. Society's interest in preserving these lives, in reducing the human and economic cost of these shootings outwieghs the selfish interests of gun owners..

And I'd argue that presumably those who disagree view their right to own a handgun as far more important than the lives of the thousands who die every year as a result of inadequate gun laws. Don't take away the handgun I never use, just so a few thousand people I don't know and don't want to know can go on living: what have they ever done for me? Besides, I'm sure that it is their fault if they get killed.

Of course, the truth is far more complex than that, and the arguments of the gun owners are neither as heartless nor as foolish as this would suggest. And only the most naive would expect a strong gun law to have a significant immediate impact.... but only the most naive of gun owners can really 'blame' careless gun owners for the death of innocent children... is any one really arguing that careless parenting is not now nor ever will be a fact of life? And is the therefore inevitable loss of innocent life (the children are often too young to be morally at fault) really a fair price to pay for anyone to own a handgun?

And so on. Blackshoe, I agree that it is unlikely that either of us will change our minds, but I do realize that there are two sides to the issue.

[blackshoe]

mikeh, on Nov 27 2007, 08:14 PM, said:

And so on. Blackshoe, I agree that it is unlikely that either of us will change our minds, but I do realize that there are two sides to the issue.

Do you think that I don't realize that?

There's no such thng as "group rights". The members of a group have the same rights as every other individual, i.e., their individual rights. The group certainly acquires no new rights just because it's a group.

If you believe groups have rights extra to individual rights, how so? And do different groups acquire different group rights?

No, I don't believe it.

[mike777]

With the seemingly endless debate over countries splitting apart I wonder if that makes people want to own guns more or less?

Just in my lifetime the number of countries that have split apart is huge.
Even in Canada or the UK they talk about it as a real issue, today. Take a look at Europe or Asia or Africa the last 60 years.

I do not know how much home invasion is an issue in other countries, I never seem to hear anything about it anyplace else except here in the USA.

In any event will all the future high tech weapons coming I bet guns are only for the old fogeys, soon.

[mike777]

blackshoe, on Nov 28 2007, 01:34 AM, said:

mikeh, on Nov 27 2007, 08:14 PM, said:

And so on. Blackshoe, I agree that it is unlikely that either of us will change our minds, but I do realize that there are two sides to the issue.

Do you think that I don't realize that?

There's no such thng as "group rights". The members of a group have the same rights as every other individual, i.e., their individual rights. The group certainly acquires no new rights just because it's a group.

If you believe groups have rights extra to individual rights, how so? And do different groups acquire different group rights?

No, I don't believe it.

Yes, in law there are rights that belong to a group, example the state, that do not belong to an individual in law that is.............

See the formal Justice system as just one small example.

There is a whole group of rights that belong to the Military that individual nonmilitary citizens do not have. In fact they have their own justice system of rights....outside of the civilian one.