I can recall my father getting into a bind because we owned a single horse within the city limits. Of course the police department owned several, but that’s called an historical tradition.

The laws and statutes remain.

Now the standard is a 9mm automatic with a 13 or 17 round capacity magazine, and an AR-15 assault rifle in the back seat. There is also a trend in those jurisdictions that have not standardized the sidearm to allow officers to select their own weapons. In these cases, even more powerful calibers such as the 10mm, .40, or .45 Magnum, often equipped with exotic munitions and laser sights, are not uncommon. And just about everyone carries a backup (also affectionately known as a “throw-down”) strapped to their ankle. The term comes from the fact that if you unfortunately shoot an unarmed citizen, you can throw down your backup and cover your ass.

My brother in law is a cop, and he says the trend is due to the fact the opposition is better armed due to the high availability of more lethal weaponry to criminals. The criminals aren’t necessarily wingnuts, but the increasing firepower of the weapons they’re encountering is definitely a result of wingnut nation.

Cops may be gun buffs themselves, and often exhibit wingnut tendencies of their own, but are almost unanimous in their opposition to having these weapons available to the public.

And of course, everybody wears body armor, even the bad guys.

While I enjoy slagging wingnuts as much as the next normal person, I was interested in the possible connection between growing rightwing terrorism and the militarization of the police. The issues are both getting attention in the media, but I find it interesting that they’re being viewed in isolation. Is it really that hard to imagine that the police might be noticing the rabid rightwing rhetoric and that arming themselves is actually a rational response?

One more thing rightwingers have to answer for.

Conservatives: Why America can’t have nice things.

But then there’s the combat shooter, the guy who is obsessed with the ballistic effect on human tissue of tactical pistol and assault rifle fire. These people are either police buffs (that should automatically qualify anyone for the funny farm) or see themselves as combat heroes, redneck Rambos ready to mow down their enemy should they ever be called to duty. They probably understand subconsciously that they are neither physically nor mentally capable of actually engaging in real combat operations, so they need to justify these violent fantasies with absurd, elaborate justifications of defending the nation and their freedoms against hordes of heavily armed urban criminals (code word for blacks), enemy infantry (the Red Dawn Patriots) or their own government, who they love to paint as a left wing cabal eager to shove atheistic Communism and health insurance down their throats.

Although this is mostly a right-wing, middle-aged, working-class rural white guy disorder, that is not necessarily the case. Remember the Black Panther Party, the Weather People and the Symbionese Liberation Army? Lefty gun nuts are in the minority these days, but they do exist. They mostly fantasize about shooting it out with skinhead militias, the KKK, or their own government, eager to shove fascism down their throats. Since there are much fewer of them, they turn up a lot less often on the news when they crack. But they are the same bird.

Even so, most of these guy, left or right, are all talk, and rarely pose a real threat to anyone, mostly because they lack the balls to actually put themselves in harm’s way for no good reason. They just like to think of themselves as mighty warriors. The problem is that any attempt to control access to this type of weaponry is immediately perceived by them as the reason why they need them. It feeds on itself. This is why we have the elaborate constitutional justifications and appeals to abstract patriotic principle. And occasionally, especially when they get together in autoerotic self-righteous gangs like they did recently on the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, they can work themselves up into a real hissy fit.

Why does an overweight, short-of-breath, pasty-faced suburban slug who hasn’t been in a fight since high school need to have a collection of military weaponry and big bore handguns? For the same reason they buy monster trucks when they live in the suburbs, or muscle cars when they will never be on a race track. Guns and cars are penis surrogates, they need to get laid more often. They have to come up with a valid excuse for what they do and cover up why or people will just laugh in their faces.

And that is what they’re really afraid of.

Maybe the increasing militarization of the civilian police forces in the US isn’t just what we assume is the usual governmental overreach and another aspect of the surveillance state or maybe creeping fascism or whatever…

But the rhetoric of confrontation suggests this: American police face the certainty of more confrontations with more heavily-armed and heavily-paranoid Americans than ever before. They hear the overheated anti-government rhetoric, they see their comrades murdered and shrouded with the Gadsden flag, they saw the snipers taking a bead on Federal agents at the Cliven Bundy hoedown, they hear the incessant calls for guns everywhere as our only hope for safety. They know which way the wind’s blowing.

If you were a cop, wouldn’t recent events and recent rhetoric make you more than a little afraid to knock on any door? Doesn’t the militarization of the police reflect the real threat these second amendment extremists pose to the country?

If it comes to that, the gun will be of no help. The badguys will ask you to turn over all your guns, and if you are found with one you will go to prison. Or be shot. And the same goes for your family.

If the government decides to confront you, it will do so with overwhelming force. It may blow up your house first, or barge in at night with a lot of people and weapons.

Look at Iraq. American troops break into civilians residences all the time. And there’s at least one AK-47 in each house. The civilians know better than to haul that thing out and point it at someone.

It’s a bogus argument. Won’t work. When it comes to that, the government will win.

I was a second-rate M1 sniper (missed one). First-rate 81mm indirect-fire gunner. First-rate M1911A1-shooter. First-rate 90mm recoiless gunner. First-rate M60 gunner. First-Rate 50-Cal gunner.

I eventually left the military and just never had any desire to own. I feel fine, and the shots I hear outside my window are like a soft bedtime lullaby for this Infantry Joe.

I think I’m fine.