I started reporting this article with a simple question: What would it look like to build a better police department from the ground up?
Police in the US, after all, are more likely to shoot and kill someone than their peers around the developed world, and disproportionately the victims are Black Americans. Meanwhile, serious crimes are often unsolved — with almost half of murders in 2020 going uncleared.
So I asked a dozen experts, focused on criminal justice, what could be done about this to build better police departments. They gave me a lot of different answers, with a consensus on more accountability, a greater focus on crime prevention and more serious offenses over minor ones, and support for non-police efforts to address root causes of crime, among other ideas.
But they consistently gave the same caveat: America’s gun problem. The US has the most civilian-owned firearms in the world, with more than one gun in circulation for every person. A bevy of research has linked greater gun […]
I wonder how many people know what the 2nd amendment actually says. It is one simple sentence which ties gun ownership and possession to the need for militias. Period. The Militia Act of 1903 created the National Guard, which essentially replaced the need for organized militias.In other words, the need for militias is obsolete, as is the need for gun ownership. Personally, I view the 2nd amendment as a failed social experiment, with its failure demonstrated by daily occurances of gun violence.No amount of legitimate gun usage, such as self protection and hunting, can justify the epidemic of gun violence that is ongoing in the United States. I repeat, the 2nd amendment is a failed social experiment.