Most BLM protesters were white people advocating for Black civil rights.♥️ All their lives, they thought that they had the 1st amendment right to protest, because they had seen white supremacists march without being beaten by cops. They didn't realize that the right to free speech depends heavily on what you are speaking about, and who you are speaking for.
Now I'm seeing college professors and students learn the same lesson about what US cops will do to you if you speak up for the wrong thing.
Free speech in the US is so very selective. It's far from the universal right that many seem to believe it is.
One of my go to examples:
Want to use profanity on radio/TV or show nudity on TV? No way, that's offensive and you'll be fined into oblivion.
Want to send someone a message threatening to rape or murder them? No problem, that's free speech.
On a separate and related note: it's bizarre how many people focus on the inconvenience and not the message around protests.
I'm not sure if that's what Paul meant, but my point is much simpler. You don't need to read Immanuel Kant to know that the 2nd amendment is not a real right. It is not "the right to bear arms." It's "the white to bear arms."
Because simply trying to exercise that right, can get a Black man summarily executed in the streets by the state. And there will be no consequences for the executioner. "Police shot an armed Black man, etc" Having a gun is the only justification needed.
I 100% am not giving the 2nd amendment enough credit, philosophically. Because philosophy doesn't come into my reality.
Do you know that many cops in major cities keep toy guns in their glove compartment? This is called a "drop gun." If the police officer shoots an unarmed Black child, they go back to their car, grab the toy gun, walk over to the child's body, and drop the toy gun on it.
The presence of a toy gun justifies the killing in the eyes of the average American.
@escarpment @mekkaokereke @psa Legality comes into reality; because the thing about drop guns is...they sound like tampering with a crime scene, where the crime is an officer of the law shooting someone who happened to be unarmed and not a viable threat.
And that while the 2nd amendment shouldn't allow that to be a valid way of tampering with a crime scene because simply having a gun is not apparently illegal, it is de facto considered as such for a specific subset of the population.
@escarpment @mekkaokereke @psa That is, the law seems to indicate that we as a society agreed that, philosophically, we don't agree with tampering with a crime scene.
And yet there's this glaring contradiction with the use of "Drop guns".
@AT1ST @mekkaokereke @psa The law indicates that some of us have identified tampering with a crime scene as something we disapprove of. The officers violating this law do not appear to agree with that, or at least think it is preferable to them to place the gun than face the consequences without the gun placed.
The outcome will be determined by whether the people who disapprove of this behavior have the power to prevent it, or if the officers have the power to continue doing this.
@escarpment @mekkaokereke @psa The law is the *encoded* ethics of specific people; it's why murder is against the law, but self defense is an affirmative defense to that crime.
But the thing about the behaviour we're talking about? As @mekkaokereke pointed out, it happens *disproportionately* more to people of a specific race, to the point that it effectively doesn't to people of a different race, and thus essentially rewrites the laws that encoded the ethics of the people who wrote the rights.
@escarpment @mekkaokereke @psa "Most people don't even go about their day thinking about what is legal -"
I'm going to stop you right there, because as true as that is, it's pretty much the *job* of *law enforcement* to think about what is legal. That's kind of the *point* of their job.
@escarpment @mekkaokereke @psa It's not an "Intellectual curiosity" - it's their *job*, that they are paid to know, and perform actions based on their understanding of the law.
That they *don't* is a problem - and...is the type of thing that the courts have glossed over with qualified immunity when they *really should not*.
@escarpment @mekkaokereke @psa Is it "Worthless" to opine that someone who is flipping burgers in a kitchen does not know how to flip burgers?
It's the job of management to ensure that they're trained to do so as well, safely, and food-safely.
That principle applies just as equally to the police.
mekka okereke 
Paul Armstrong
Escarpment
Alexander The 1st