@conradhackett @sociology

I want to contribute that in the United States, police who shoot, are typically sued by the criminal who threatened their life. Then it's a matter of the criminal / victim winning by technicality. The office may lose their career over this, and the ability to fight for everything they believe in. Would you give the criminal who threatened your life this opportunity? The problem is far more complex than simply taking weapons away. The current legal framework encourages this behavior, the media glorifies the hardcore lifestyle, and the citizens that thrive, thrive from a fear based economy.

We're all a little bit villain, and a little bit hero. No human is exempt from being human, one of the things that used to make the US wonderful, was people gained the ability to work hard for the bigger picture. Nowadays, we search for a groups to vilify, justifying the error in ourselves.

The United States is a highly competitive county. As humans we're inherently hunter gatherers, whether our target is knowledge, money, status, glory, honor, righteousness, piety is what diversifies what we value, and at the same time devaluing what is not our target. That makes us arrogant. But it also makes us work hard, fight, steal, lie, kill, protest, scream, and go to other extremes just to climb one more step on the ladder, so we can look down on the rest. My poor country once fought a war on extremism, and we fought it so hard, that we became the monster we're fighting. That's the nature of the great American experiment, some of it works until all of it works, some of it doesn't until all of it doesn't. That's the nature of all experiments. That's the nature of us.