00:00:47.900In the past, I've basically taken the position that there's not a real issue.
00:00:52.700It's all just hysteria, and I still maintain that there's a lot of hysteria mixed into this, clouding the picture, but still, when you sift through that, there is definitely an issue.
00:01:07.740Let's just start by looking at some recent episodes.
00:01:10.540Most recently, from just last week, police were responding to a shooting at a mall in Alabama, and in the process, they killed an apparent innocent man, a mantic Fitzgerald Bradford, who, according to witnesses, was trying to direct shoppers to safety.
00:01:27.540He was trying to help, and he got killed in the process.
00:01:29.780And to make matters worse, they apparently shot him in the back three times, according to an autopsy report.
00:01:53.780He himself had a gun, but he was carrying it legally with a permit, so it's a bit reminiscent of the Philando Castile shooting.
00:02:01.880It was another man legally carrying a gun, not trying to harm anybody, and yet was shot and killed by police.
00:02:08.600Now, if you follow the trajectory here, it doesn't make the police look very good in this case.
00:02:15.860So, originally, they said that the suspect in the shooting had been killed.
00:02:23.900And then a day later, they said, okay, actually, the guy that we killed probably was not the shooter.
00:02:29.340And then a few days after that, they said, well, he wasn't the shooter, but he was brandishing a gun.
00:02:35.360And then, in fact, in a statement issued by the police department, they said, we can say with certainty, Mr. Bradford brandished a gun.
00:02:43.600But then later that same day, they clarified that the victim, Bradford, maybe didn't actually brandish a gun.
00:02:52.980Maybe he just had a gun in his hand, which is not the same thing as brandishing one.
00:02:59.660But, again, apparently he had the gun legally, and according to the family and witnesses, he was trying to help other shoppers.
00:03:06.480So, there was also a similar case to this a month before.
00:03:12.980So, in early November, there was an armed security guard, Jamel Roberson, was killed by police after attempting to detain a shooter at a bar in Chicago.
00:03:24.520He was doing his job, and police killed him.
00:03:26.440Now, there's a big problem here, because how are we, as gun rights advocates, how are we supposed to make the case that a good guy with a gun can stop a crime
00:03:37.560if police are just going to show up and shoot the first person with a gun that they see when they arrive on the scene?
00:03:43.760So, these are cases that, as gun rights advocates, these are cases that we should be really paying attention to.
00:03:53.300First of all, because innocent human life has been taken, but also there's an issue here with gun rights.
00:04:00.260If police are killing legal gun owners, that's a huge issue.
00:04:07.440And it does seem rather conspicuous that gun rights advocates, for the most part, say nothing about these cases.
00:04:19.680Now, there are exceptions, but for the most part, gun rights advocates say nothing when police kill legal gun owners.
00:04:31.720Now, the month before this, so we've got December, November, now this was back in, I think in October, maybe late September,
00:04:41.880a man named Botham Jean was in his own home, in his apartment, in Dallas, when an off-duty cop came into his home and shot him to death.
00:04:52.560Now, she has since been charged with murder.
00:04:54.300She claims that she accidentally went to the wrong apartment, and she thought he was an intruder,
00:05:03.740and so she was barking commands at him, and he wasn't obeying the commands,
00:05:07.240because, you know, God forbid you fail to obey the commands of an intruder who just came into your home,
00:05:14.680which she was the intruder in this case, and then she just killed him.
00:05:19.940Now, these are cases from just the last three months.
00:05:24.300And there are plenty of others from recent times that have been equally as egregious.
00:09:54.680If an innocent man is laying dead in the street after being gunned down by a trigger-happy cop, it doesn't do much good to assure his family and the community that this is a rare occurrence.
00:11:47.720And we as citizens who pay your salary and are expected to respect and listen to you should be able to expect in return that you'll do your job without killing or otherwise abusing innocent people.
00:12:18.280No, I think they can take chances, and they should.
00:12:22.200Their first instinct and responsibility should be to protect innocent civilian life, not their own.
00:12:31.760Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves, but if they're going to err on the side of protecting themselves or protecting the innocent, they should go with the latter.
00:12:47.520If their first job is just to protect themselves, even if it means killing someone and erring on the side of, well, look, you know, I mean, you've got to err on the side of just killing an innocent person.
00:12:55.960If that's what makes you safer, then what's the point?
00:13:01.860Firemen have dangerous jobs, and they have to protect themselves, too, as they're doing their jobs, and we can't expect them to, you know, put themselves in situations that are, you know, in dangerous situations without being able to protect themselves.
00:13:19.120But if a fireman arrives at the scene of a fire, and there's a child trapped inside a burning building, and he could feasibly rescue the child, but he's too scared, so he lets the kid die instead, we would have every right to be outraged at him.
00:13:34.060And yeah, he could say, it's a dangerous job.
00:13:35.820I don't see you out here fighting fires.
00:14:11.380And we seem to accept this idea that a cop's first priority should always be to preserve his own life, even if it means possibly taking an innocent life.
00:14:19.460But that just seems really backwards to me.
00:14:21.920I thought protect and serve meant protect and serve the innocent, the public, not protect myself.
00:14:27.820So if you look at the Tamir Rice case, for instance, okay, the child was a kid who had a toy gun.
00:14:36.800And you could say, well, you know, the cops didn't know it was a toy.
00:14:42.900And, you know, a bullet fired from a real gun, even if it's fired by a 12-year-old, is going to be just as lethal, potentially, as a bullet fired by an adult.
00:14:52.040Well, so, you know, they didn't know, and they were being cautious.
00:14:58.200Okay, but they knew that it was a child they were dealing with.
00:15:03.640They had to know that it could have been a toy gun.
00:16:41.000But there has been this general philosophical shift, I think.
00:16:45.160Second factor, there was a study done recently showing that something like 20% of all police officers are always or nearly always angry and frustrated on the job.
00:16:57.520Now, they have plenty of reasons to be.
00:17:02.160Cops deal, much of the time, with the dregs of humanity.
00:17:05.240Cops deal with drug addicts and domestic abusers and gang members and so on, and I imagine that can make them jaded.
00:17:12.560I'll never forget what a cop said to me once while we were waiting at traffic court so that he could testify about a ticket that he'd given me, a well-deserved ticket.
00:17:24.620I was going like 25 miles over the limit.
00:17:27.360And, but as we were waiting there, he said to me, he said, you know, it's hard.
00:17:32.240It's hard because the only time I interact with normal, decent people in this job is when I'm pulling them over to give them tickets.
00:17:38.400The rest of the time, it's domestic violence and drug-related stuff.
00:17:55.540But on the other side, it's kind of scary to think that 20% of the cops you come across wearing guns and badges and exercising an enormous amount of authority over you are angry and frustrated from the get-go.
00:18:11.920That's a frightening proposition, considering how much power and authority they have.
00:18:18.260In fact, basically, when you're, when you're confronted by a police officer, in that moment, they basically have complete and total power over you.
00:18:32.840That's, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
00:18:34.560It's not the way it should be, but that's the way it is.
00:18:36.300In, in practice, that's the way it is.
00:18:38.480Because they've got the gun, they've got the badge, and, and that's all.
00:18:44.880You, so if you, and if you don't listen to them, they could kill you.
00:18:51.200So it is, given that, the way that power dynamic works, it's frightening to think that so many of them are almost always, according to this survey, frustrated and angry.
00:19:02.560Now, that leaves a lot of cops who are not always frustrated and angry or are rarely frustrated and angry, but there's still a large number who are.
00:19:08.780Um, and it's, it's a self-perpetuating thing, right?
00:19:15.520Because cops deal with a lot of just scumbags, frankly, and so that can make some of them bitter and resentful.
00:19:24.000But then, when they're engaging with non-scumbags, with just normal people, you know, a normal person who happened to be speeding and they got pulled over, doesn't make you a scumbag, right?
00:20:07.480I think, you know, I had a brake light out recently, um, and of those interactions, a couple of them were really nice and the police officer was really nice and friendly.
00:20:21.000But then a couple of them, the police officer was just a jerk, uh, to me for no reason.
00:20:25.700Like, it was just no reason going into the interaction.
00:20:42.200I don't, I don't let that paint my impression of police officers in general.
00:20:48.320But I think the point is, if you're a, just a regular civilian and you've had several interactions with police and they're being jerks to you for no reason, uh, that could make you resentful.
00:21:01.320Um, so police officers are resentful based on their interactions.
00:21:04.660The public is resentful based on theirs.
00:21:06.420And it's just, uh, it's just a cycle and it leads to bad places.
00:21:14.600And this circles back to the first point with the philosophical shift.
00:21:19.720But I think we have an, an exaggerated idea of the kinds of power a cop is supposed to have and conservatives who are usually big fans of limited government and all of that, all of a sudden they lose that conviction when it comes to the police, the skepticism, the desire for accountability, the caution that conservatives usually have when it comes to the government.
00:21:42.700When it comes to state power, suddenly that vanishes with respect to police to the point where some conservatives will even insist that it isn't our place to criticize, but it is.
00:21:56.220These are public employees, public servants.
00:21:58.860We have every right and every responsibility to hold them accountable.
00:22:03.880And I think part of this very authoritarian view that some people have about the cops and that some cops have about themselves is the idea that if you disobey an order from a police officer, or if you fail to follow it exactly as instructed, that alone is reason enough to kill you.
00:22:23.520Um, I go back to the Daniel Shaver case.
00:22:28.040He was, he was, he was, uh, clearly try trying to follow the orders that were being barked at him, but the orders were confusing and they were coming at rapid fire speed.
00:22:38.520And Shaver was obviously overwhelmed and terrified.
00:22:41.880When you've got people pointing guns at you, um, that can be frightening and it can, it can make you a little bit jumpy and it can make you, um, it can be difficult to follow instructions in that situation.
00:22:53.440So as he was crawling on the ground, crying, begging for his life, he moved his, his hand slightly just to lift up his shorts.
00:23:04.000You can see in the video that his shorts are falling down.
00:23:07.640Um, and so he reached just to pick them up.
00:23:09.700So it's a normal instinct that people have when your pants are falling down, you pick them up and that's when they killed him.
00:23:14.940Now, when I talk about that, when I talked about that case at the time that it happened, some police defenders said, well, he shouldn't have moved his arm.
00:23:25.160Uh, he, that's what happens when you disobey the police.
00:24:00.660I really feel like that shouldn't be a controversial statement.
00:24:03.800And you could say, well, he's moving his arm.
00:24:05.400Maybe he's, maybe he's reaching for a gun.
00:24:08.000Well, I think it should have been really, you know, you, you look at the video, it should be really obvious to anyone that he didn't have a gun.
00:24:29.620They're the ones who are paid to be in these situations.
00:24:31.420They should be able to make those assessments.
00:24:33.160But what I'm saying is, even if he was reaching for a gun, let's say even, even if he was in the, you know, there were three guys with guns pointed directly at him.
00:24:45.880Even if he did grab a gun, there, they would have enough time.
00:24:51.560By the time they actually see him, they actually see him grab the gun.
00:24:55.540There is enough time for them to then open fire.
00:24:59.720I know you could say, well, it's a split second thing.
00:25:01.660It's not literally a split second though.
00:25:03.560Like it takes, unless you are, unless you're John Wayne or something, it takes you more than a second to go from here to grab the gun, to pull it.
00:25:11.960It's, it's a short amount, it's a few seconds, but what I'm saying is that police officers should value life enough that they're willing just to wait for a second.
00:25:22.700And without assuming, without jumping to this conclusion and then killing someone just in case, because that's what this is.
00:25:31.140They, let's be clear about what they, they killed him just in case.
00:25:35.200Like he probably didn't have a gun, but maybe he was.
00:25:38.160And just in case, let's kill him to be safe.
00:25:39.780Like that's, I, I, I, I submit again, that is not how the police should operate.