Who's At Your Door?

Anyone paying attention is aware that the War on Drugs^TM has been an utter failure. The price of cocaine has dropped like a rock since the campaign began and our prisons are bursting at the seams with low-level, non-violent offenders guilty of nothing more than wanting to feel good.

Hand in hand with the War on Drugs^TM has been the militarization of police departments around the country. Nearly every medium sized or larger department in the country now has some type of paramilitary unit and it is not just high level Miami Vice style cartels that they are being used against, but normal people just like you and me that may or may not even use drugs.

These units are being used based on the flimsiest of warrants and in situations that couldn't possibly justify their use. Naturally, there have been dire consequences to their raids. Police are executing no-knock and knock-and-enter warrants on innocent people and in many cases, those innocent people are seriously hurt or killed. What's even worse, is that in many cases, police are lying and planting evidence to cover their own asses.

No one in the Blogosphere has been more diligent in covering this issue than Radley Balko. It is from Balko that I learned about the cases of Kathryn Johnson and Frances Thompson. Just two botched cases in one city by one department. The latter ended with just a scared 82 year old woman, the former with an 88 year old woman lying handcuffed and shot as she bled to death on the floor.

These are not isolated incidents either. There are stories just like these taking place all over the country. In fact, Cato has put the Google Maps API to use in the most important manner that I have yet to see. They are tracking botched paramilitary police raids around the country. Their list currently has 296 such stories, including 41 which involve the death of innocent civilians.

This is the kind of stuff that I have in mind when I think of the need for a strong 2nd Amendment. Often times, the response that I get from gun control advocates is that I am simply being paranoid and must be like the so called "nutjobs" at Waco or Ruby Ridge. Of course, what else would I expect from people that have no real concept of why the Founding Fathers even included the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights. They felt the need for it not primarily for hunters or even self-defense from others, but rather for self-defense against a tyrannical government.

That someone could even consider the possibility of the need to defend yourself against a rogue government seems beyond their comprehension. Naturally, I don't need to point out that these are often the very same people that consider Bush to be akin to Hitler. Such irony would be lost on them anyway.