321. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

A suspect in the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, is now finally in custody. Ferguson has become a lightning rod for violence and protests since an 18-year-old unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot by a Ferguson police officer last August. More and more attention is being given to police killings and also to policemen being shot, in some cases, as an outgrowth of the Ferguson protests.

For example, two Brooklyn policemen were murdered while sitting in their patrol car last December. Their killer, who later took his own life, is thought to have been angry about the Michael Brown shooting.

President Obama issued a statement shortly afterward, saying “I unconditionally condemn today’s murder of two police officers in New York City… The officers who serve and protect our communities risk their own safety for ours every single day — and they deserve our respect and our gratitude…”

A day later a Florida police officer, Charles Kondek was shot to death by a 23-year-old with an extensive criminal record. On March 4th officer Terence Green, a 22 year police veteran in Georgia, was shot and killed in an ambush. The next day Philadelphia officer Robert Wilson was shot and killed when he and his partner interrupted a robbery.

Given the dangers the police face every day – as President Obama has noted — it comes as a surprise that the White House would back off plans to ban M855 armor-piercing “cop-killer” ammunition. But it seems that over 80,000 people expressed opposition to this common-sense ban. This despite the fact that the ammunition, which has no practical value to either hunters or target shooters, can pierce the body armor police officers wear when fired from a hand gun.

Nearly 300 members of Congress, including Nebraska representatives Adrian Smith and Jeff Fortenberry, opposed the White House’s attempt to protect law officers. Others speaking out against the ban include Sidney-based firearm and ammunition retailer Cabela’s and Grand Island ammunition maker Hornady Manufacturing Co., whose profits would apparently drop if these cop killer bullets were banned.

In regard to this issue Congressman Smith said “Nebraska’s sportsmen and hunters should not be prevented from accessing ammunition,” adding that he has cosponsored a bill that would prohibit banning any type of ammunition. Smith implies this ban would make it difficult to find ammunition, despite the fact that 168 less-lethal versions of this ammunition would remain available.

A recent poll by the right-leaning General Society Survey indicates that less than a third of Americans own a firearm. And I suspect that most of those who do own one respect the safety of our law officers. Yet somehow a small minority of these people have managed to derail a common-sense measure to protect law enforcement officers.

This is insanely irresponsible, though no less so than the fact than we as a nation have failed again and again to do anything to curb gun violence, even when scores of children are massacred in their classrooms.

On average one hundred Americans are shot every day. Yet somehow those who appear to believe that the Second Amendment prohibits protecting anyone from guns, including the police, are preventing common-sense measures from being enacted to stem this appalling toll. And so long as the two thirds of Americans who don’t even own a gun continue to elect leaders who embrace the paranoid delusion that reasonable restrictions on firearms equate to the complete loss of all gun rights, more and more police officers will join the hundred other people who fall victim to gun violence every single day.

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