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Originally Posted by molson
But the criminal law is not supposed to match up exactly with our morals. It's supposed to be much harder to convict people than it is to morally judge them. And it's supposed to much harder to convict someone of a higher-degree crime than a lower-degree crime.
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Sure. I can dig it. But here's the thing:
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We can move in the direction of reducing the right of self-defense in criminal cases, and reducing the power of police officers to use force.
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I'm not interested in handcuffing police officers' ability to do their job, pardon the pun. I'm interested in accountability. And I'm NOT interested in "I was afraid for my life" as a blanket escape-accountability-free card.
You're a police officer. You chose that job, knowing what it means, and one of the things it means is that you may find yourself in a threatening situation. The power of the state means that you have the ability to use lethal force to put an end to dangerous situations, which isn't a power civilians necessarily have. But you trivialize that power and that responsibility if every time you pull the trigger - justified or not - you fall back on "I was afraid for my life."
Sure, leave lethal force in the police toolbox; we pay them to keep the peace, and sometimes keeping the peace is going to mean pulling the trigger.
But there has to be accountability. As many of the same people who unswervingly support the police when shootings happen will tell you, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. The legal exercise of that right should not be a death sentence.
"Obey the police officer's orders" is well and good, but Philando Castile was obeying the police officer's orders and got shot anyway.
So...there you are.