>In fairness, it must be scary to be a cop in a restless US neigborhood. You never know when you'll get a split second's notice that somebody is opening fire. Shoot first and ask questions later used to be satire but in 2015 it may be the best route for a cop who wants to make it home to see their kid rather than attending their own emotional funeral in a box while the kid salutes the dead hero.

The police here is a voluntary group - so if they are too afraid to be a cop then they should find a different job. Of course its a dangerous job - that's part of the deal. You take a job where you hunt down criminals (or people that are supposed to be criminals anyway) then yeah - you're putting yourself at risk - but that's what you signed up for when you volunteered for the job. There are split second decisions that have to be made - but when a mistake in those situations happens that's one thing, when the cops beat the crap out of someone or plant drugs on them or shoot them in the back and plant guns on them..etc etc etc - then ya got a real problem - and that happens here EVERY SINGLE DAY over and over and over.

>Sure I'd hate it if my relative were the victim of the mistake- but if there are guns all over the place and people aren't ready to try to push that genie back into the bottle, there's going to be a balance between cops being killed and public being killed that has to favor the cops or it would be even crazier to be a cop than it already is.

But when the cops are killing unarmed civilians on a regular basis, what do you expect to happen? Especially when they've been doing it for several decades and have done everything possible to hide the numbers and facts from the public. If there were fewer guns and the NRA had a clue then perhaps things would of evolved differently, but as it stands - getting that genie back in the bottle is pretty much impossible. So in the meantime we need this thing called "accountability" when the cops are shooting, beating, chocking, killing our friends and family for no good reason they need to be held accountable for those actions, and the public needs to know about all of it.

>Just for clarity, there are lots of places in the First World where the cops are not armed and/or don't need to be. Including in the US. But you'll never hear about those in the MSM that caters for prurient interest in conflict and drama and sees no foul in helping to provoke a riot.

I do not recall ever seeing a cop here in the USA that did not carry a gun. Perhaps they exist - but I've sure never seen one. And as much as I hate guns and police shootings, all cops I think need to have a gun over here... if nothing else because everyone else has one.