The Stockton Armed Militia

A man in stockton declared a few months ago that if the police get fired, he's going to activate a militia to patrol the city. Well, 55 cops are being fired. Through technicalities, not all will end up "fired" but rather "early retired" but the figures will be the same. Stockton only has about 400 police as is.

The idea of a militia sparked liberal bitching across the country. The epitome of ignorance "wonkette" had around 100 comments describing Stockton in every derogatory manner they could imagine, having absolutely no knowledge of where Stockton even is, or pretty much anything else, some even confusing it with Stockholm. They still managed to declare everything cliche' white trash, kkk, nazi, they could imagine, and I pretty much almost cried at how fucking stupid these people are.

I like the idea of a citizen force picking up the cop's slack. But there's no room for reason in this issue it seems.

On the one side, you have all the dumbshits who think no one but the police should be allowed to have weapons, including our own fucking mayor. On the other hand, you have hundreds of untrained people who might be missing the point, but will all go out shooting if necessary.
Where's the informed middleground? I'm thinking I need to fucking talk to this guy before something tragic happens.

Let me lay this out. I am 100% pro gun. I think babies should be allowed to own machine guns. I don't mince words. I think Iran should be allowed to point nukes at us and talk shit. I think people should be allowed to work on death rays. I think every human should be allowed as many weapons of global destruction as they want, until they prove they aren't responsible enough to possess them. I had to make that clear.

That being said, I don't trust these guys to do proper law enforcement. It's one thing to have a gun to protect yourself, or people around you. It's a whole different realm to go out looking for shit to get into. Bad training can kill as much as any gun can.

I'm not a police officer, I don't feel qualified to patrol the streets in a law enforcement capacity. Yet I have worn a badge that said "police" on it. I have been trained in many aspects of law enforcement. I am an expert with several weapons, including the 9mm and the expandable baton. I am well trained an experienced with verbal commands, detaining suspects (handcuffing), arm bar techniques, the levels of force, and the circumstances for deadly force. For the small piece of land I patrolled as a military law enforcement, I was experienced, I knew what I could and could not do. But this is Stockton, and the rules are different.

That's the problem. There are so many dynamics to law enforcement. Security (and self protection) is easy, you protect something, you know what you're protecting. Law enforcement means getting involved in really confusing shit that you might not have any right to diffuse.

I won't feel comfortable about this Stockton Armed Militia unless they have positive support from the police, as well as training. I think if Stockton has a militia, it should serve in an official capacity, and it should break down like a volunteer branch of the police department. Volunteer, because the only reason Stockton might need a militia, there's no money to pay police.

I also think they need to take focus away from the guns. I can appreciate good citizens armed, but if that's the militia's only goal, to be an armed presence, they won't help 1/100th of the problems of not having police. If they only spring to action in a gun fight, they won't be springing to action very often. Cops are needed for so much more than that.

Imagine a scenario where the militia witnesses a man beating up a woman, so they swoop in, but they have no training for anything but gun play. What can they do? Pull out their guns. Great, someone's not going home that night.

Cops have "levels of force" at least in the utopia version of law enforcement I was trained into we did. Militia need to consider carrying more than guns, like pepper spray, batons, handcuffs, tasers, basically things that can solve a problem with no one dying.