“So, for all the other reasons you may want to ban or limit guns from Americans, please remember, that if we’re going to count on police to use force to protect something, their obligation is to protect the law, not you. There is a reasonable expectation that a citizen may have to protect him or herself before the police can respond.”
It is worthwhile reading this entire article that leads to this pull-quote.
Probably because there are so many movies and TV shows produced in and around Los Angeles, the LAPD motto, “to protect and to serve,” has become a sort of national idea of what police do. In fact, it has been adopted by many other police departments around the country as their own motto.
In the recent increase in the national conversation about guns, the point that we have police to protect us often comes up when personal defense is brought up as a reason to own guns. I’d like to take a look at the idea that the police are here to protect us, and by extension perhaps, that the armed forces are here to protect us too.
Of course, this country rightfully has a long tradition of not using military for domestic police action, and hopefully that will never be breeched, so I’ll begin with local police.
When I was growing up in the 60’s we had a cartoon character named Officer Friendly. And the local police department would have an officer come to school playing the role of Officer Friendly. Police were the guys who helped you when you were lost, they helped get your kitten out of the tree, and they caught bad guys when the bad guys took your stuff. That’s what was clear to us then. I had never seen a policeman wearing a flak jacket, military cargo pants or carrying an automatic weapon.
by Howard Wetsman MD
