There can be no good come from a political discussion on this forum. However, I do believe it is possible to post opinions/observations of these current national events in a civil and nonpartisan fashion. We all come from different backgrounds, different careers, and have had different life experiences.
I observed two things on National news yesterday that should have each and every American concerned about the future of this country. I won't even go into the third thing that brought me out of my chair (this nation's most notorious uncharged traitor Jane Fonda's statement)
First off, in recent days the BLM (Black Lives Matter) group has started a campaign to "defund" police agencies. This began with them simply painting it on some of their signs and yelling about it during the protests. It immediately caught on and yesterday the Mayor of LA went in front of the cameras and said he was asking to shift millions of dollars away from their police budget to other programs. Officials in NY have followed suit.
To keep this in prospective you have to roll back to 2014 and go to Ferguson Missouri. Michael Brown was gunned down in the middle of the street and all the major news agencies were there. Everyone immediately jumped to the conclusion that this poor unarmed "kid" was gunned down while having his hands raised in the air. Our president at the time even jumped to that conclusion within hours and made inflammatory statements. The riots began and Ferguson burned and was looted. It turns out that Officer Darren Wilson was almost killed by Brown while still seated in his squad car (he choked the officer and tried to grab his gun). After Officer Wilson broke free Brown took off and was pursued. When confronted on the street Brown bum rushed Wilson in an attempt to overpower him and that was when the officer shot Brown multiple times to stop the assault. A State Prosecutor tired to indict but was unable to get a Grand Jury to go along with any charges on the Officer. Even after that the current administration sent in a stacked federal team to get Officer Wilson charged with civil rights violations and were unable to pull that off. In other words, Officer Wilson was defending himself and the shooting was justified. This was when BLM was organized, as the result of a justified police shooting.
I really am not interested in conspiracy theories about the group ANTIFA. Maybe they will turn out to be true maybe not. Maybe investigators will find out there are some interesting folks out there giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe they won't.
What common sense tells me, and should tell everyone, is that if current undermanned big city police departments are downsized, or in some cases dismantled, those cities will become war zones. It may not happen overnight but within a year or two most of the law abiding citizens of the larger metro areas will attempt to migrate to other parts of the country. The cities will be left to the gangs and thugs to rule completely. Make no mistake, just because you don't own property in NY, LA, or some other large metro area doesn't mean this won't effect you. The millions of folks who have to flee these lawless gang controlled cities have to go someplace and your city of 100,000 will be the perfect place.
In 2016 and 2017 Chicago had two of their worse years for homicides. There were 248 and 244 killed each of those years. They began driving those numbers down and in 2019 the city bragged about only having 192 murdered. They got the numbers down by hiring over 1,000 new cops in a 2 year period and paying more attention to community based policy strategies. They also spent some needed money on cameras and gunshot detection systems in the city. They understood that the vast majority of these homicide victims were young black males and they also understood how to slow the slaughter down.
I don't think Chicago will be one of the major cities willing to cut their police budget anytime soon.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant. My main point is there is a real threat currently out there. I am taking more and more precautions as it pertains to coach/home defense. We will not be traveling anytime soon by coach, car, or motorcycle. I hope everyone stays safe and stays alert for changing conditions.
