Murder at 1600

Well another murder in the city. So, how do we stem the tide of shootings and death, not only in the city, but in the country?

First we have a large problem with firearms, this is obvious. However, the problem is firearms have been flooded in the U.S. since the civil war. Therefore, any attempt to curtail people from carry weapons only effect law abiding citizens. So the police should be armed over and above what matches that of the criminals in society. Yet in many jurisdictions criminals outgun the police by carrying automatic or semi-automatic assault style rifles.

While many departments refrain from issuing rifles and shotguns to their staff because they feel that it presents a too aggressive image, many departments have started to issue these weapons in order to combat the rising violence of street crime.

Starting in the early 1990s there was a trend to scale back the aggressiveness of the police, in part because of high profile cases of alleged police abuse of civil rights. However, there is a sliding scale of civil rights. The ultimate impact of civil rights to the extreme is a lawless society however, the problem therein is that once lawlessness prevails then everyone's rights are curtailed by others, specifically criminals seeking to control the weak. This is apparent in jails and prisons across the nation. Ironically, although criminals reject the moral code of society, they adopt their own rules and regulations once in prisons with penalties far exceeding those imposed by society for similar transgressions against law and order. Do you really want weak police officers protecting you who fail or won't take action in a serious situation? When someone is breaking into your house at 3AM and you call the police, who would you rather respond, a meek, and frightened police officer or an aggressive one willing to risk their safety to protect yours?

So, what is the solution? The country and society in general must realize that they can't have it both ways. Either you have an orderly society, which requires a uniformed force to protect itself, or you have an anarchist society with a rapidly deteriorating moral code, such as we do today. We say we have all these problems yet we fail to do anything to combat them. Why do we continue to sell video games featuring murder and murder of police officers in stores? Why do we continue to have TV shows and videos that depict criminal activity? Because of freedom of speech?? When does one good outweigh the other good? Yet you can't yell fire in a crowded theater... because it incites a breach of the public peace...

A crackdown, nationwide, is needed to rapidly combat criminals. We need to start shifting our outlook to previous times with a higher moral, ethical, and criminal justice outcome.