It's certainly an offshoot of our culture of fear and the consequent obsession with self preservation/denial of death. It's all weird though because we are mostly afraid of movie stuff, like a serial killer breaking into our house or terrorists. Texting as we swerve across the road en route to our 4th fast food meal of the day doesn't seem to bother us.Smitty-48 wrote:Well, I think the nation itself would have to find more collective courage, as in assuming more risk at the legislative and regulatory level, because the police are really just instruments, which are subject to the environment, so I don't see how America itself can be on permanent hysterical hair trigger alert, all day every day, permeating every aspect of life, but somehow the police would be the only people in America who are calm cool and collected in everything that they do.LVH2 wrote:Good advice.Smitty-48 wrote:If you're concerned about your safety, and you happen to point a rifle or what would appears to be one, out of a hotel window, I'd advise you to get out ahead of that, go down to the lobby, tell them that you just did something very reckless and foolish, and the police are probably going to be showing up any moment now, jacked up for a mad sniper call, so you're just going to wait with the staff of the hotel, so you can turn yourself in when they arrive. I wouldn't, if I were you, just run around the hallways of the hotel, after pulling a stunt like that.
Again, I don't know what it's like in Arizona, but If I did that here, no doubt an army of cops would show up, and no doubt they would be jacked up.
But there are tons of people who are stupid, drunk, high, crazy, stressed out or who panic or break down in high pressure situations. We can say, "you shouldn't be like that," but they are like that anyway.
If police training/policy results in several hundred such people being shot every year, it needs to change. Cops will just have to grow a pair and find the courage that everybody other than them has. I think most of them already have it. Can the rest.
If you want to ratchet the pressure down at the tactical level, you need to ratchet it down at the strategic level first,
One thing I've discovered driving for rideshare is that people now live in gated communities within gated communities. You have to go through a checkpoint with a security guard to get into the larger gated community. Then you have to punch in a code to get into the second, smaller gated area. I've always wanted to ask one of these people if they testified against the mafia.
I made that joke to a friend who just said, "better too much security than too little." He's goes about 375 lbs.
However, I also think this might be a squeaky wheel thing, in that the most hysterical are the most vocal, be they cops or HOA boardmembers and others just go along.