http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/18/1336354/-Yes-it-s-true-Police-only-shot-four-people-and-nobody-died-in-all-of-England-the-past-two-years?detail=email
I had always heard that police in London, by and large, don’t carry guns. Except for the police we saw at Heathrow Airport, we actually couldn’t find a police officer with a gun in London. I looked. The kids looked. Even when we were near famed locations like Buckingham Palace or the British Museum or the London Eye, we just couldn’t spot a single officer with a gun. Our first inclination, fully Americanized to equate guns with protection, was to wonder just how safe we were since none of the officers had firearms, but that feeling soon wore off and we went from feeling weird about not seeing any armed officers to feeling a sense of relief.
It’s not that everywhere my family travels we actively think we are targets to be shot and killed by a police officer, but we, like most black families, have grown sadly accustomed to the near daily news story of another black man or woman being gunned down by the police. In what can only be described as a reality in black America that is widely shared but rarely discussed—police scare the shit out of the most law-abiding black folk you’ve ever met. Being pulled over by the police for a routine traffic violation might get you beat down, or sent to prison on some trumped-up charges like Marcus Jeter in New Jersey, or even killed. It is a sad, running joke throughout black America, backed up by semi-hilarious videos, that white folk can yell in the faces of officers when they are angry, but black folk would be shot on the spot in any such instance.
This reality, when my wife and I shared it with black Londoners, just shocked them. They have their own beefs and concerns with police, but this idea of trembling in fear when pulled over for going 65 mph in a 55-mph zone was just foreign to them. In fact, after visiting the United States for the very first time in 2012, my wife’s hairstylist in London, Teresa, said she felt so unsafe she wasn't looking forward to going back.
"I was scared to death," Teresa told us. "My entire life I’ve wanted to visit New York City and the week we were there on holiday from London, at least six people were murdered, including a teenager who was gunned down by police in his own home."
The United Kingdom, like the United States, has its own deep history of violence. I won’t use this space to teach a history lesson and I only lift it up because anytime I mention how much I believe the United States can improve its modern issues of violence, people are quick to reference our deeply violent past as being too big a hurdle for us to overcome.
those who oppose refuse to acknowledge the reality of impending death or mayhem lurking around the corner in a black and white or all white with words like "to protect and serve" or "in emergency call 911" but the translation to many Black and Hispanic's is quite different more watch your back, comply, don't excite this person they may be looking for an excuse to end you.
our problem I agree is not as much guns as it is frame of mind guns a means to an end to qualify that frame of mind. most hate and have no clue why, great grandpa did officer bubba did, my favorite non reason for hate, a reporter interviewed this old toothless White guy in the south, asked him why he hated Obama his response, "because his name's Obama", then looked at the reporter as if to say "didn't you know"?
most are like that "daddy said so, my republican congressman/user told me so" "rush Limbaugh told me so" o'reilly told me so, and he looks out for us folks" everybody tells them to hate except their own mind for their own reasons. sounds like Fox and G W Bush got it right, "you can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on"
http://gawker.com/5814150/roger-ailes-secret-nixon+era-blueprint-for-fox-news
