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Trigger warning [1]
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Date: 2022-07-07
Feel safe now?
After every mass shooting in the United States, scores and scores of law enforcement officers from every level and every town within driving distance flood the scene. Municipal, county, state and federal cops. They arrive in hulking SUVs that plug the streets, and pile out like troops. They form up in complete battle rattle looking like they're about to assault Faluja, though the firing has stopped, the shooter is dead or captured, there is no need for this theater.
Almost every officer has strapped on an assault rifle, usually an AR15 just like the one used by the shooter those officers have deployed to neutralize. And they stand around and walk around, looking grim, with their index fingers positioned visibly and safely on the trigger guard of their weapons.
I understand that sometimes there is fear that the shooter hasn't been eliminated and it might be good to have some long guns in the good guys' hands, but that's hardly ever the case. Nine times out of ten, the gunman is dead, killed by the cops or by his own hand. But still the police stride around menacingly with their ARs at the ready, the same kind of gun the killer just used.
There has not, to my knowledge, been any cases where any of these ARs were needed by the police in the aftermath of a mass shooting. So why do we need to be triggered by them? Why do we always flood the scene of a mass shooting by a guy dressed in tacticals and body armor and brandishing an AR15, with scores of more guys in tactical and body armor and brandishing AR15s.
I don't know about you, but I start to seethe when I've seen the same 5-clip loop play for the 20th time while the anchor reads her script, and every clip features a terrifying sunglasses-wearing robocop brandishing the same weapon of war the shooter just used. I see that over and over and my blood begins to boil. I feel like I'm in a war zone. I am triggered by their triggers and I wish they'd find a better way of now, now that the gunfire has died away, of now helping us feel safe again.
Submachineguns don't do that for me.
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