Case - No Guns For Cops

Case: No Guns for Cops
Hansen
Mizzou 2015
Synopsis: This aff is really just a militarism K in disguise. Ad I is police shooting, but on the
impact level it’s a militarism K.
Plan: The United States Federal Government should adopt a policy to significantly
reduce gun violence in the United States by prohibiting regular patrol officers from
carrying firearms.
Ad I: Police Shootings
Uniqueness
1 Police shootings high now
-The DOJ publishes “justifiable homicides” by police officers each year, in 2014 it was around
400. However, these numbers are problematic because many departments file information in
other categories that aren’t tracked or published.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/08/how-many-police-shootings-
a-year-no-one-knows/
-Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent and criminal justice professor compiled an independent list of
police shootings gathered from a year long study of police databases and news reports found
that numbers are closer to 1,200 shootings.
-All reports conclude that numbers are up. Even the DOJ admits police shootings in 2014 were
up over 50% from 2013 numbers.
2 Firearm-centric policing tactics are bad

-The New Zealand police commissioner wrote in an editorial, “I have no doubt that carrying
handguns would compromise officers' ability to do their regular work, because when you carry a
weapon, your primary concern is to protect that weapon. If this was balanced by a clearly
demonstrable increase in personal protection, it would be a price to consider paying. But the
protection offered by a firearm — particularly a pistol — is more illusory than real.” This means
having firearms makes police less likely to work out peaceful solutions and more likely to
engage in violence.
-The Economist noted in Aug. 2014 that Americans are 100 times more likely to be shot by
police than the British.
-Karl Bickel a senior policy analyst at the DOJ argues that the military-like nature of police
creates an us-versus-them mindset in officers and moves police from a model of community
engagement by adding additional mental stress to their jobs.
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/12-
2013/will_the_growing_militarization_of_our_police_doom_community_policing.asp#two
https://reason.com/archives/2007/07/02/our-militarized-police-departm/print
3 Guns are the cornerstone of police militarization

-The constant presence of firearms means that lethal force is always a consideration. This was
even understood in 1878. The Posse Comitatus Act was passed during reconstruction to end
US army presence in Confederate states in response to the more violent behavior of a military-
esque forces.
-Guns are tied to the rise of the warrior cop. The DoD donates surplus M-16’s, M-4’s and 1911’s
to police departments, including a large donation in 1997 which preceded a spike in police
shootings.
Impacts
1 Police killings
-Police perpetually kill several hundred people a year. This impact is systemic and ongoing.
2 Police militarization becomes the rhetoric used to justify conflict

-Dr. Peter Kraska, a professor at the Eastern Kentucky University School of Justice Studies
argues that policing rhetoric (war on drugs, crime, etc) has replaced anti-communist rhetoric
after the Cold War.
-”Metaphors play a powerful role in the construction of reality: they shape discursive practices,
clarify values and understanding, and guide problem-solving processes. Filtering the crime and
drug problems through militaristic metaphors, thus, will likely result in thoughts and actions
which correspond with the war/military paradigm. As mentioned earlier, the pervasive use of
militaristic discourse in U.S. society to address social problems is one indication of an
incremental, inward turn of militarization.”
-Militarism is merely militarization's supporting ideology: "a set of beliefs and values that stress
the use of force and domination as appropriate means to solve problems and gain political
power, while glorifying the means to accomplish this -- military power, hardware, and
technology" (Kraska, 1994:3).
3 Risks extinction
-Police militarization creates a blurring of internal and external threats where civilians are
considered insurgents creates a system where every life becomes a target because aggregate
populations become potential insurgents.
-an ideology and theoretical framework of militarism which stresses that efficacious problem-
solving requires state force, technology, armament, intelligence gathering, aggressive
suppression efforts, and other assorted activities commensurate with modern military thinking
and operations
-”Martial crime-control rhetoric, so ubiquitous in contemporary political/media culture, originated
out of post World War I and 11 politicians employing the "war" metaphor as a means to rally
public support for addressing various social ills. President Lyndon Johnson, in 1966, was the
first presidential politician to call for a "war on crime," along with wars on disease, poverty, "the
inhumanity of man," and hunger -- in an attempt to divert attention away from the escalating
conflict in Vietnam (Sherry 1995). President Nixon followed Johnson's and Barry Goldwater's
lead by ratcheting up the intensity of "war" discourse in his draconian campaign against heroin
users and low-level distributors. He labeled drug abuse as "public enemy number one,"
equating the problem with "foreign troops on our shores" (Kappeler, 1996).”
Solvency
1 Plan solves
-Plan decreases police shootings. New Zealand and the United Kingdom have adopted the
same policy and see at or near zero fatal police shootings each year.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/08/armed-police
-The plan leads to a system where police focus on community engagement. The London Police
are a good example of this. The London Police are successful through being in touch with the
community. It redefines policing from an all-powerful violent overseer to members of the
community interested in its betterment. It sounds utopian, but it really has happened and really
works.
-Plan questions the efficacy of firearm-centric policing. By removing its essence, we are able to
rethink how policing should work.

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Case: No Guns for Cops

2 Firearm-centric policing tactics are bad

3 Guns are the cornerstone of police militarization

2 Police militarization becomes the rhetoric used to justify conflict

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