[Baromaro]

MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41235743...me_and_courts/

A spate of shooting attacks on law enforcement officers has authorities concerned about a war on cops.

In just 24 hours, at least 11 officers were shot. The shootings included Sunday attacks at traffic stops in Indiana and Oregon, a Detroit police station shooting that wounded four officers, and a shootout at a Port Orchard, Wash., Wal-Mart that injured two deputies. On Monday morning, two officers were shot dead and a U.S. Marshal was wounded by a gunman in St. Petersburg, Fla.

On Thursday, two Miami-Dade, Fla., detectives were killed by a murder suspect they were trying to arrest.

"It's not a fluke," said Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations. "There's a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on."

...

He cited the example of Jared Loughner, accused of killing six and wounding 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, on Jan. 8 in Tucson, Ariz. "People with this mentality feel the need to eliminate those in position of authority," he said.

[bactrimtab]

There's been a war on police, at least in the Seattle area, for over a year. A year ago Halloween, a man killed one officer and wounded another that were sitting in their patrol car in Seattle. And then the Sunday after Thanksgiving 09, Maurice Clemmons walked into a Forza coffee shop and shot four Lakewood police officers who were writing up their reports. It's scary out there for police.

And on the negative side, the police in this area, being very leery, are shooting first and asking questions later (or beating the hell out of suspects). In August a police officer saw a vagrant Native American walking across a street in downtown Seattle, whittling a board (something he was known to do). The man was deaf in one ear, and hard of hearing in the other. The officer got out of his car, and told the man to drop the knife (he wasn't facing the officer) four times in six seconds and then shot him five times, killing him.

The knife was closed when officers responded.

[escolubtessen]

I watched the incident in St. Petersburg unfold yesterday on the local news. It's clear to me that the shooter, a career felon whom police and federal marshals had been tracking for weeks, was not going to be taken without a fight. He died, but not without killing two police officers and wounding a federal marshal. Was this guy engaged in some kind of war on the police? No, I don't think so. I think he was a violent individual determined not to go back to jail. Trapped in a house, surrounded by dozens of police officers who were determined to arrest him, he had a gun and he used it.

What we have is a country where it is way too easy for criminals and crazy people to get guns.

[igs00r]

Yes, and for all the insistence that states with more lax gun laws have lower crime rates (ostensibly because criminals might think twice among an armed populace), those same states also have the highest rates of death and injury by gun, because in states where there are more guns, there are more accidental shootings.

But indeed, lax gun laws play a role in putting guns in the hands of people who should not be armed.