As the 2020 Democratic primary drags on, we’ve seen any number of creative gun control proposals on the table. These range from expanded background checks to outright confiscation of firearms from law-abiding citizens. But this crowd doesn’t have anything on the City Council in Burlington, Vermont. (Keep in mind that this is Bernie Sanders’ old stomping grounds. He used to be the mayor there.)
A story from Warner Todd Huston at Godfather Politics popped up on social media this morning and it deals with Burlington Councilwoman Perri Freeman. Self-identifying as a “progressive Democrat,” Ms. Freeman isn’t messing around with taking guns away from the rank and file citizens in her community. She’s suggesting that they should take them away from the Police in her fine city. And no… this is not a satire piece.
A liberal Vermont city councilwoman has proven to be so anti-gun that she even wants her own local police department to disarm.
Burlington, Vermont, councilwoman Perri Freeman — who calls herself a “progressive Democrat” — insisted that it makes sense because some foreign nations don’t arm their police, according to 1360 KKTX radio.
“Realizing that there are actually several countries where they’re not using firearms for their regular police duties. Just to name a few: the U.K., Ireland, Iceland,” Freeman told the media. “I started thinking critically about what is the next step in terms of policing practices, whether that’s having more sophisticated training for officers, having a different expectation.”Needless to say, the police weren’t immediately jumping on the bandwagon. The president of the local police union showed considerable restraint when he described an unarmed cop showing up in the middle of an armed robbery as being a “disadvantageous situation.”
As noted by the police union president, the countries where cops frequently go around with no weapons – like Great Britain – tend to be the ones where their gun control laws are so onerous that virtually nobody out on the street has a firearm. (There are always exceptions, of course, but it’s true for most of them.) Also, each and every one of those law enforcement precincts have weapons available back at the station with officers who are available to be deployed on a moment’s notice if things get hairy.
And even if the suspects don’t have actual firearms, a police officer responding to a situation where multiple, potentially violent suspects have bats or knives could still leave them facing a potentially lethal situation if they’re not armed. We have villains out there trying to run cops down with cars. You can’t seriously be pushing for the theory of “the good guy without a gun” here.
Is this where the Democratic Party is eventually heading? Their presidential candidates are out there on the trail, constantly trying to one-up each other on gun control proposals. The media should start asking them what they think about the Burlington proposal and see how many will bite. Sanders would be a good one to start with since the reporter could bring up the subject in terms of the city where he used to be mayor.
Do you think I’m being unrealistic here? These are the same people leading the party that wanted to abolish one of our primary immigration enforcement agencies. Do you think they would shy away from disarming the police at this point? Heck, if you can get one of them to go along with this proposal, I’d be willing to bet that the next one would suggest studying the possibility of doing away with police forces entirely.
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2019/09/23/vermont-city-council-tackles-problem-police-guns/
