Throughout my second blog post I explained the way in which cops are trained. In short, they are trained to shoot and kill. Truthfully, I believe that the training they receive is the most important part. This is the foundation that cops base their decisions on. If in training they are taught to shoot to kill, then they are going to do so. Cops need to spend less time on learning to shoot guns and more time on how to defuse the situation with words.The gun situation in our nation is a little more complex. It saddens me to think that on our soil alone, we have more guns than any other nation. The reality is that the gun laws in our nation need to be stricter. It baffles my mind that an eighteen year old can go into any gun shop throughout the United States and purchase a gun. Of course depending on the state, there are different requirements, but just think about that for a second, eighteen years old. However, for the gun laws to change in our nation, this must be done by the federal government. Though there have been numerous attempts by the Obama administration, these attempts haven't been clearly all that successful. With congress and the President both pushing for stricter gun laws, we can only hope that this will prevent the the worst criminal from having guns.
Mentioned in my second blog was the idea of having officers not weapons. This has been done in a variety of nations around our world such as, Britain, Iceland and Ireland. Research has found that the citizens in these nations feel more comfortable with officers, and officers feel that they have never really needed to use a weapon/ felt unsafe. In our nation, I believe that officers not having guns would be difficult. I say this because, as mentioned before we have more guns on our soil than any other nation out there. If we put cops out on the streets in our most dangerous cities with out protection, we would be putting them in a danger. This would also create an advantage for the criminals. If the cop said to the criminal, wait don't shoot me I don't have a gun, do you think he/ she would listen, I think not? There are taser guns out there, however very few police departments use them. Yet we must also take into consideration, that these taser guns could be putting cops at a disadvantage because the criminals will have real bullets.
Our government has also invested a ton of money into body cameras. Hopefully, in a few years every cop in the United States will be equipped with one. Though this would be a very large investment, I do believe that its one that will help to solve a lot of unanswered questions. After all, if the officer in the Michael Brown incident was wearing a body camera, the outcome of the case could of been completely different. A police officer can not just turn off his camera in the middle of a dispute. Remember body camera don't lie.
The American people, need to put faith into its Police forces. These people risk their lives everyday for us, yet they don't get the respect they deserve. We need to look at the way we train officers, our gun laws, and keep investing in body camera until every police department in our nation is equipped with them. Once all these things are done, I believe that no longer will police be seen our enemies but our protector.
