Argumentative Essay: Police Should Not Carry Guns

Michael Brown. Aiyana Jones. Tamir Rice. These names all have several things in common. They were all unarmed. They were all under police control. They were all shot. And they were all killed. These are only three people out of uncounted others who have lost their lives because of police possession of destructive weapons. These deaths have sparked protests, riots, and distrust towards law enforcement. The police should not carry guns or guns with deadly ammunition while they are on daily patrol because shootings by police are increasing, the tension between police and citizens is causing feelings of unrest across the nation, and not carrying guns has helped other nations. The first reason police should not carry guns is because the

Eric Garner was an African-American man killed, on video, by police who put him in a chokehold after he resisted arrest for illegally selling cigarettes. Ismaaiyl Brinsley shot and killed NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, allegedly in revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Although it is assumed that none of these deaths directly affected Brinsley, he still felt the need to react in fatal violence. Guns have become so common that it seems people often forget what they were originally created for. People associate guns with the “mistrust, defensiveness and aggression” that derive from them (Washington Post). Guns also turn misunderstandings and suspicion into deadly situations. Take Tamir Rice, for example. He was holding a toy gun, but the officers who shot him believed that he was holding a real firearm. Guns have become so normalized in today’s society that it is more probable that a twelve year old boy was holding an actual firearm than holding a toy. What makes it worse is that instead of trying to reason with Rice, the police shot him on sight even after the 911 call said the pistol was probably fake. While it may be easier to use the violent, racist cop narrative, Foreign Policy argues that these are each distinct problems. In other words, the United States has “a violence problem, and a racism problem, and a policing problem” (Foreign Policy). The danger comes when these problems