Eureka, your article just happens to point to the problem being related more to the overuse of SWAT teams for inappropriate situations rather than a problem with gun control.

Drugs are associated with violence because there is no civil legal recourse in the illegal drug business. That violence is an unintended consequence of prohibition of some drugs.

De-escalation of violence is not likely with out a change in policy – going after the harms of substance misuse and having a regulated civil market of some form for them. I’ve advocated medicalization as a possible short term policy change.

Police no knock raids are bad tactics that lead to mistakes and dead civilians.

Get ready folks!

Not til just now. It’s pretty good. See also NSL (National Security Letters). There have been narrow adverse decisions against the NSL aspect of the USA PATRIOT Act. I haven’t followed the issue since the Court ruled the law unconstitutional in view of the fourth amendment (fairly recently too – within the last 6-8 months, by memory)

I emphatically agree that privacy is compromised by alot more than FISA, and that FISA is just (in principle) the narrow class out of international communications. But even there, I think people should have a reasonable expectation of privacy – or, if the government is going to grab all of it, the government should say so, so people can seek alternative means of communication or otherwise code their private communications.

The “wall of separation” was actually entirely within the FBI. I think bureaucratic fiefdoms within the law enforcement community is a bad thing. There are bad guys, the government ought to follow reasonably developed suspicions, and the government ought to keep it’s eyes peeled.

I don’t think Congress will get it right. Not this year, not next year.

Have you taken a look at “A pragmatist’s view on FISA” by NCrissieB over at the Great Orange Satan?
It looks like an important contribution to the FISA debate.

I remember very clearly during the 9/11 hearings about what a “terrible” thing the Wall of Separation between FBI and CIA was, and how the need to keep intelligence operations separate from criminal investigations was “ruining” our ability to anticipate terrorist operations. (Fear! Fear! Be Very Afraid!!!) That lead to the U.S. Patriot Act, which may, in effect, have neutralized the Fourth Amendment, as NCrissieB argues. Is a court test of that anywhere in the works?

I think this whole issue needs to be revisited next year, with a new Congress. In particular, the article in the June 12 issue of the New York Review of Books that compares British anti-terrorism efforts with our own is much on point.

What do you think?

Bob in HI

If you want to say that the current hand gun bans in urban areas have prevented this supposed situation, I’m willing to accept it, but I don’t think there’s any hard evidence to back that argument. This situation may have occurred, but I’ve never understood it to be the norm.