Originally Posted by
Bailey Guns
Maybe. One huge difference is an officer generally has no idea who he's dealing with...avg Joe Citizen or multi-time convicted, violent felon. Joe Citizen knows he's dealing with an officer and the chances of that officer being "bad" are exceedingly slim. Joe Citizen probably has an interaction with police once a year, if that. An officer potentially contacts multiple people per shift. So I don't think it's quite the same. Not to mention it's all the rage for the media now to WANT to make police look bad so that's all we hear about. We don't get to see the hundreds of thousands of police/citizen contacts every single day that don't result in something negative aside from maybe a traffic ticket.
I don't think your "why do you carry a gun" comment makes sense nor does it stand up under scrutiny for the very reasons I pointed out.
I do agree law enforcement has a PR problem. I also think a lot of that problem is exacerbated by a biased media that takes all sorts of false ideas (like "hands up, don't shoot") and gives them credibility where none should exist.
That's not to say there aren't a few bad apples. We all know there are and we've seen examples recently. But they're pretty few and far between. They're like planes...one crash and it's all over the news with no mention of the hundreds of thousands that took off and landed safely.