There Should Be No Carve Outs For the Police

 Today at Bearing Arms Tom Knighton has a piece entitled Why Special Exceptions for Law Enforcement Make Little Sense. Knighton brings up the famous case of the DEA agent who claimed to be the "only one" professional enough in that room (he was giving a talk to a classroom full of kids) to handle his gun, just before firing a negligent discharge into his own leg. This incident spawned the "Only Ones" meme by David Codrea at the War on Guns.

You see, we the armed public, are not perceived to be sufficiently trained, or sufficiently responsible enough to manage our firearms on our own without the "help" of legislators, who pretty much don't know anything about guns or handling them. Witness the bozo statements by Congress citters about guns. I could put more such links, but they would be redundant. They don't carry daily, but they presume to tell everyone else how to do it. They create a series of "gun free zones" that require us to constantly take our guns out of our holsters and put them in our cars. Then they complain that guns are stolen out of our cars. Then they suggest we just keep them locked up, where they can't do harm, but can't do any good either.

See, the police aren't some special class of people who are more pure than the rest of us because their cause is righteous. Police departments are organizations made up of people, which means some are good and some are bad. Some are smart and some are idiots.

What's more, we also know that while law enforcement may well go through a great deal of training initially, armed citizens not only put themselves through extensive training on their own time, but often continue with training through discussion, videos, range trips, and additional classes.

I'm not trying to denigrate law enforcement here. I'm just saying we, the law-abiding public, should have the same access and availability for firearms that police officers do. Just because they draw a paycheck doesn't make them experts on how to handle guns, after all, and I'm sure most officers can name some colleagues they don't think should be allowed out in public without supervision, much less allowed out with a firearm.

The expertise of the police is in things like patroling, catching speeders and other criminals, investigating crimes and building cases for prosecution. Guns are tools, but not their most important tools, same as civilians. Therefore, whatever restrictions are placed on civilians should be applied to police officers as well. They really aren't the "Only Ones."