Cops these days have a wide assortment of weapons available to them, beyond the standard firearm. Many of those weapons are non-lethal.
There is pepper spray. There are tasers and stun guns. There are partners and backup. There is self-defense and hand-to-hand combat that they could conceivably be receiving as part of their routine training. Even with guns, there are rubber bullets and tranquilizers.
It seems like there are very few select instances where a police officer could reasonably use a gun over one of his non-lethal choices. On the other hand, it seems like there is ample evidence that the access that police officers have to guns leads to many sorts of undesired outcomes.
It is true that it would be hard to argue that if a police officer were facing a situation where he thought his life or someone else's life was imminently in danger, that he would choose a non-lethal weapon over a gun. However, it also seems inconceivable, to me at least, that if a police officer were faced with a situation where he thought his life or someone else's life was imminently in danger, and he did not have a firearm readily available, that he wouldn't find a way to use his non-lethal weapons to protect himself, either.
While it is reasonable to admit that there will always be situations that require an elevated response from police, they already have SWAT units dedicated for such purposes.
Perhaps I am being naive, but it really just seems to me that cops with guns doesn't seem all that better, all other things being equal, than cops without guns.
We already know that police officers in many other countries do not carry firearms routinely, yet still manage to maintain similar levels - or higher - of community protection. Of course, one could argue that most of these countries do not also have the same level of gun owners.
There can be an argument made that carrying a firearm is meant to be part of the crime-deterrent effect of police officers in general. Of course, it is not like we are living in a world completely devoid of violent crime. I feel like, for the extreme downsides that cops with guns represent, the upsides have not proven to be a fair tradeoff, in terms of crime deterrence. Furthermore, if it comes down to perceptions of the average citizen, I feel that I would have far more admiration for a police officer who believes he can perform his duties without such weapons, than for a police officer who believes such a weapon is necessary and should be relied upon regularly.
There is also the cultural effect and the perceptions, that are a bit harder to gauge, but probably indirectly play a role. I feel like living in a society where we take it as a given that we need our cops to carry guns to feel safe, it is going to be a lot different, not just with the cops but with people and media and society in general, than a society where we take it as a given that we don't want cops to carry guns and in fact want as few guns around as possible. I feel like the values would be different, the attitudes and reactions to given scenarios, as well as the overall acceptance of guns would be far different.
I get that it is not politically feasible to disarm our police force anytime soon. I get that making such extreme arguments is a quick way to obstruct meaningful discourse. I get that for a lot of people, the initial thought of a police force without guns may simply seem preposterous. The point of this diary is not to advocate for this outright.
This is more about questioning prevailing conventional wisdom.
When we are facing issues that are prominent these days, relating to police brutality and the role guns have played in recent situations, I feel like it is fair to ask if police even need guns in the first place. And I feel that taking the answers to such questions for granted closes off possibly constructive discussions we could be having, and possible ways to address a lot of the problems we want to actually take steps toward addressing.
Perhaps that is just me.