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I have often, in writing about firearms and general personal and family security issues asserted, gentle readers, you’re on your own.  You always have been.  This is so for these general, unchanging, reasons:

1) There are very few police officers, far more criminals, and far, far more non-criminal citizens.

2) Most people would be shocked to learn how few police officers are on patrol in their community on a minute-by-minute basis.  Police agencies are always understaffed because personnel costs are around 90% of police budgets.  To put one officer on the street 24/7/365 requires the hiring of at least four officers.  Three for three 8-hour shifts and one to cover for vacations, illness, court, training, and other daily issues.  Those officers will not be independent patrolmen for about a year from their date of hire, and to be truly experienced and capable takes many more years.

3) Lying about their past and current beliefs and actions, D/S/C politicians, shell shocked by the approaching mid term elections, are claiming they’ve never supported defunding the police.  Why, it was those evil Republicans/Normal Americans all along!  As a result of that lunacy, and D/S/C’s general hatred for the police, which prevents them from doing their jobs and threatens to fire and/or jail them if they do, officers are fleeing our cities in droves.  Those that can retire do, others flee to red states where they’re allowed to follow the Constitution and enforce the law, and many have given up entirely on law enforcement.  As a result, D/S/C ruled cities are having a hell of a time hiring anyone without a criminal record and an IQ larger than their belt size, and those police forces remain woefully understaffed, with no relief in sight.

4) Major cities—most of which have been Democrat ruled for decades—are akin to third world war zones, and that was before Communist prosecutors took over and refused to prosecute criminals.  Police response time to 911 calls is like that of Detroit’s and Seattle’s: an hour or more, if they can respond at all.  When someone is breaking into your home intent on mayhem and murder, the police may be able to get around to it in an hour or so.

5) There is no doubt crime rates, particularly in those blue cities, have skyrocketed. Unfortunately, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, once the Bible of such statistics, can no longer be trusted.  Not only has the FBI been entirely corrupted, many cities and states no longer provide statistics to the FBI, and the statistics blue cities provide are demonstrable lies, attempts to provide cover for their D/S/Cs rulers:

The data collection system, called NIBRS (National Incident Based Reporting System), requires greater detail (and effort) in logging crimes, which the FBI said has lowered participation rates. As a result, the 2021 report relies heavily on estimates for their national figures.

6) In rural areas served by county Sheriff’s Departments, response time can be even longer, but only because of the very few deputies available and the very long distances they have to travel.  In bad weather, they may not be able to respond at all.

7) Most police officers are not gun-smart. Many citizens are superior to them in knowledge, ability, accuracy and tactical proficiency.  The officer responding to your call—if they respond at all–is likely barely able to qualify with their handgun, given generous passing scores, an easy course of fire, and as many attempts as they need to pass.  With our “relaxed” standards, many would fail to qualify and be fired.

8) Many police forces, particularly federal forces, are increasingly politicized, becoming little more than political weapons against Normal, law-abiding Americans.

All of this and more, as bad as it is, assumes there are no political impediments to police officers doing their duty.  Officers must be able to reasonably believe they will not be required by law, or ordered, to ignore violent felonies committed in their presence.  Officers must be able to reasonably believe when they lawfully use force, they will have the backing of their superiors and their community.  They must reasonably believe there is no class of people that may not be arrested or those who must be arrested for political reasons.  They must reasonably believe when they make a lawful arrest, it will be prosecuted, and hardened, dangerous criminals will not be back out on the street before they can finish their report on their arrest.  They must reasonably believe when they make a lawful arrest, the criminal will face prosecution, not them.

Sadly, circa October, 2022, in many places, police officers can no longer take any of this, and more, for granted.  The problems plaguing honest, professional cops extend beyond cities to entire states.  In Illinois: State Of Insanity, in September of 2022, I reported on the lunacy of that state:

We begin with what has already been done in Chicago.  In response to the justified shooting of a gun-toting teenager who ran from police, Chicago police can no longer pursue fleeing criminals.  They may pursue some very narrow classes of offenders, but that class is so narrow, so hard to identify in the heat of the moment, for all intents and purposes, all crooks have to do to get away is merely flee, and the police simply watch and wave goodbye.  But that wasn’t enough, no, for state politicians.  They had to outdo even the D/S/C lunatics ruling Chicago, where breakfast table conversation is: ‘how many got shot overnight?’ Courtesy of Legal Insurrection, we learn Illinois is now, for all intents and purposes, a no-bail state, even for arson, kidnapping, robbery and second degree murder(?!).

You mentioned trespassing; what about that?  Throughout the entire state, all the police can do to a trespasser is write him a ticket.  They can’t actually remove a trespasser from someone else’s property.  This, and so much more, is all a part of the ‘Safe-T-Act,’ which will go into effect on January 1, 2023.

By all means, take the link and read that article.

I have also, from time to time, written about police executives, normally county sheriffs, telling their citizens to arm themselves because they can’t, due to budget cuts and political interference, protect anyone.  To date only a small but growing number of police executives in America’s largest, most crime-ridden cities have admitted any such thing regardless of reality.  Even so, Portland’s police, in December of 2021, warned the populace they were on their own.  In October of 2022, the Detroit Police warned they can’t keep the city safe and people should enter the city at their own risk, and the list goes on and on, and not just in blue cities either.

As regular readers know, the police have no legal obligation to protect any individual citizen, nor can they be successfully sued for failing to protect anyone.  Their only legal obligation is to deter crime by their presence and investigate crime after it has occurred.  In this, they are at least somewhat successful—if there are remotely enough police around.  Criminals try very hard to avoid committing crimes in the presence of the police—or at least they used to.  And the police, depending on the place, may or may not have much success in solving various types of crime.  If they have little manpower because they’ve been defunded, so most remaining detectives are filling in on the street, or the most experienced officers are fleeing as from a pestilence, and there are no remotely qualified candidates to replace them, there will be little or no deterrence, and little or no case clearance.  Rapes, murders, felonies of all kinds will go uninvestigated, and when that happens, criminals never fail to take notice, and advantage.

Back in Oregon, as Fuzzy Slippers at Legal Insurrection reports the Seattle Police Chief admitted in 2020—things haven’t improved, far from it–the police can’t even protect themselves:

This letter was in response to the City Council’s banning of less lethal methods of crowd control and arrest, leaving officers essentially two options: (1) ask criminals pretty please to allow themselves to be arrested, (2) when they refuse, shoot them. Obviously, in places like Seattle, officers using any kind of lawful force are more likely to find themselves in jail than criminals, so the police have, reasonably and sanely, withdrawn and turned the streets over to actual anarchy.  A local judge, very temporarily in 2020, enjoined the enforcement of the then new law, but the intentions of Oregon’s D/S/C politicians was and is clear, and the police have been emasculated.  It will be a very long time—if ever—before they are allowed to enforce the law again.

Consider this from the “summer of love” in 2020 in Portland from independent reporter Andy Ngo at The New York Post:

The daily riots function to drain the city of resources and to weaken the morale of law enforcement and public officials. It’s working.

Last month, [Police Chief] Wheeler disbanded the Gun Violence Reduction Unit, claiming it unfairly targeted blacks. In the weeks since, there has been a 380 percent increase in shootings compared with the same time frame last year.

City Councilwoman Jo Ann Hardesty has taken police hatred further. She told Marie Claire magazine this week: ‘I believe Portland Police [Bureau] is lying about the damage — or starting the fires themselves — so that they have justification for attacking community members.’ She partially walked back her accusation after Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell, who is black, asked for evidence of her claim.

“Even before the protests started, we were dealing with a catastrophically short-staffed police bureau,’ says Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association. Going back to 2016, city leaders and Antifa-sympathetic activists have worked to denounce police at every opportunity. The anti-police sentiment in the city has led to early retirements and a policing philosophy of ‘de-escalation’ where cops mostly stay away from riots. Just this year, the bureau has had three different police chiefs.

‘We’re at a point where none of us knows what to do,’ says a Portland police officer who asked to be unidentified. ‘Some are thinking we just need to give the vocal minority and the politicians what they want: We go away and let the city burn.’

The situation is no better in Portland in 2022.  “De-escalation” in D/S/C ruled cities means allowing D/S/C enforcers like Antifa and BLM—and pretty much all other criminals-–to do whatever they want consequence-free.  Things have not improved in Portland and Seattle and elsewhere.  Thus are citizens, including many black Americans, women, even D/S/Cs–-many that have never owned a gun–-buying guns and ammunition.  It’s a reasonable response to malicious stupidity on the part of D/S/C politicians.

That this lunacy is occurring across the nation is no coincidence.  It’s all part of American Marxism, as Mark Levin accurately characterizes it.  More specifically, it’s the Cloward-Piven strategy, named for two Marxist academics.  Politicians purposely destroy elements of society, making things so bad, citizens so desperate, they’re willing to accept whatever socialist/communist “solutions” Marxist politicians demand.

Police officers not allowed to enforce the law are little better than no police officers.  In some ways, they’re worse, because they will inevitably be turned into political thugs, punishing the political enemies of those in power.  If you think, gentle readers, we have a two-tiered system of justice now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  The foundation for a communist system is being previewed and forged across the nation in blue cities and states.  Officers that refuse to oppress fellow citizens will find other employment.  Those that remain have essentially two choices: (1) do as little as possible and try to restrain the worst, unconstitutional/criminal demands of politicians; (2) whole-heartedly enforce their demands against the law-abiding population; they won’t be allowed to enforce the law against criminals.   Some portion of them will be only too glad to abuse the unprecedented, unlawful power they will be given, and due process will be a thing of the distant past.

Will there be vigilantism?  In some places it will become a necessity, just as it was before there was widespread, legitimate law enforcement.  What other choice will the honest have?  Neighbors will band together—they already are in many places—to protect their neighborhoods with force—that means guns, lots and lots of guns–and as things continue to deteriorate, due process will become a seldom-considered option.  When the honest are forced to resort to the three Ss—shoot, shovel and shut up—all will know our system of justice thereabouts is dead.

A former Marine stopping an armed robbery.

During the transition period between the rule of law and total anarchy–-residents of some blue cities and states are well into that period-–particularly in blue states and cities with Soros prosecutors, or those who ascribe to the same Socialist/Communist ethic, lawfully protecting oneself and others will be as dangerous, if not more, than submitting to violent criminals.  In such places, the former Marine who thwarted an armed robbery would be far more likely to find himself jailed than the three criminals.

D/S/Cs tremble in horror at rural law enforcement officers who, investigating a homicide, laconically ask: “well, did he need killin’?”  They see such comments as evidence of witless rubes endorsing murder against poor, oppressed felons.  Actually, it’s just a direct way of asking whether a killing was lawfully justified.  Any competent police officer knows when a citizen lawfully shoots a criminal, they did, indeed, “need killin.”  In a society where the police are politically prevented from doing their jobs, where they are so financially crippled they barely exist, or where they are entirely abolished, a great many more criminals are going to “need killin’,” and tragically, far, far more mistakes in the use of force are going to be the rule rather than the exception.

It’s always wise to be careful about what you ask for—you might get it–-but particularly so in blue cites and states where wisdom, and sanity, are in short supply.  Yet in red states, even officers normally allowed to do their jobs are surely much more cautious than ever before, particularly when confronting people–non-white people–who might present political problems for them.

If current trends continue or worsen—they’ve been worsening for two years now–-this may be the future for all of America.  The rise of the Biden Meat Puppet Administration and effective D/S/C control of Congress have produced these results, exacerbated by runaway inflation.  If D/S/Cs are able to once again rig the 2022 mid-term elections as they did the 2020 elections—see this article for related details–the current insanity will seem tame by comparison.  For an interesting take on that future, see this 2018 article by Larry Correia.  

Are Normal Americans going to give up their guns to people that actively hate them, that call them “insurrectionist,” “domestic terrorist,” “racist,” seek to deny parents the right to monitor and determine the education their children receive, threaten them with the FBI, promise they’ll be eating bugs, have no fossil fuels, no electricity or heat, and ascribe the worst motives and behaviors to them?  They’re going to trust these people, who won’t protect their businesses, homes and lives against D/S/C, Antifa and BLM shock troops and other criminals, not to turn even more totalitarian?  They’re supposed to believe people who have used a virus to rig elections, destroy the economy, deprive children of education, and who are throwing tens of thousands of our best troops out of the military over a vaccine proved to be ineffective aren’t willing to go full Communist?

I’ve a little secret for the self-imagined elite: you’re not, and Normal Americans are smart indeed, much smarter about the kinds of issues necessary to individual and societal survival than you.  Yes, Republicans might retake the House and even the Senate in January, 2023, but their normal procedure in such circumstances is to fight each other and at best, only slightly slow America’s descent into total madness.  They aren’t called “The Stupid Party” without cause.  Trust consistently squandered is very, very hard to re-earn.

Gentle readers, until this is all sorted out, and we find out whether we’re going to live under the rule of law or the tender mercies of the self-imagined elite, you’re on your own; you always have been.

UPDATE, 10-25-22, 1030 MT:  Take this link to a Fox News article that illustrates just how bad things are getting for police agencies.  Some excerpts:

Goldsmith warned this month that the force [Norfolk, VA] is bracing to lose another 77 officers by the end of the 2022 fiscal year, further exacerbating the vacancy rate. The vacancy rate at the department is expected to exceed 40% by the end of the fiscal year, which begins at the start of July in 2023, the Virginian-Pilot reported.

At the smaller agencies where I worked, losing only 3-4 officers caused a huge hike in overtime and stress, and it lasted until new officers could fill those vacancies and work on their own, a 1-2 year process.  That was in the good old days when competent applicants could be found. Here’s more:

Additionally, in Austin, Texas, there are 220 vacancies at the police department, as of mid-October. Active and former members of the department told Fox News Digital this month that morale has cratered following progressive leaders in the city defunding the department in 2020.

‘Everybody who keeps getting elected here is just further to the left every time, it’s gone from more passively anti-police to, what you’ve really seen since 2020, is just overtly anti-police,’ an Austin police officer, who wished to remain anonymous, told Fox News Digital. ‘I think that has been a big tipping point for a lot of people and we’ve just had enough.’

Professional police officers really do want to serve and protect.  It’s that for which they signed up.  They just aren’t allowed to do it or can’t do it.  Here’s what happens when they can’t: 

According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:

  1. St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
  2. Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
  3. Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
  4. Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
  5. New Orleans, La. (10.99)
  6. Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
  7. Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
  8. Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
  9. Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
  10. Chicago, Ill. (7.71)

The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.

Congratulations St. Louis!  You beat out Chicago as America’s murder Capital.  You’re number one!