"Handguns...exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing....

[patrice]

243. So, just how much danger are all of us in, from police & under what circumstances?

I have seen plenty of police brutality videos. None of it is excusable. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It is WRONG that anything other than that ever EVER happens.

War Against Drugs aside (because I think the huge majority of Americans agree that the WAD should end) how many of these police brutality incidents should we estimate there are proportional to the other services that police provide? Is "defending" against these incidence worth the price of indiscriminate gun ownership?

I don't see how gun ownership significantly changes bad police. I am not certain that gun ownership, FOR SOME PEOPLE, doesn't evoke conditions in which the liabilities of persons and flaws and/or inadequacies of systems come together for tragic effect.

Additionally, are the rest of us supposed to risk SYG fanaticism in order to (INEFFECTIVELY) prevent all of that by means of, to all practical intents and purposes, indiscriminate gun ownership?

And: Why do I feel as though a significant amount of this defense of indiscriminate gun ownership comes from sources who have "nullification" itself as an absolutely permanent highest priority, an end in and of itself, and an end EVEN over whatever exactly and precisely it is that is that might be nullified (that's right, I am saying whatever it is that is nullified, it could be something that is JUST an EXCUSE to nullify) and such contrarians are, hence, concerned about legal consequences for *A*N*Y* nullification, doesn't really matter what for, and that's THEIR defense of that objective against those legal consequences at the expense of ALL of those who, given respected choices in whatever the issues are, would choose *N*O*T* to be drug into such situations by circumstances generated by people at least some of whom are likely ENSLAVED by their own blind contrarian assumptions, including those about things like secession.

I am talking about the possibility that this fevered defense of indiscriminate gun ownership, at least in some significant number of instances, is coming from the kinds of people who will "defend" every step to becoming the cabin-boys/girls and/or enforcers and grounds-keepers et al for those whom Matt Taibbi referred to as the coming citizenry of the Archipelagos, which path will be rewarded, lauded, and cheered on by people like Glenn Greenwald from some/any-where in the world on the side-lines, instead of being identified for what it really is, fascism at the point of many privately owned guns.