The New Alabama immigration law

[Epsilon]

My point was not that he didn't deserve jail time, but that he didn't deserve to be DEAD. 

Neither did the man he murdered. If your brother was that caught up in the drug trade he should have turned himself over to the cops, confessed to his crimes and turned states evidence against the drug dealer. They could have kept him in jail, protected him, and arrested the bad guy and put him away somewhere he couldn't get at your brother.

This is already a given. 

Then the solution is to fix the system, not give everyone a gun and tell them to go commando on their fucking problems.

I
agree about the armed forces protecting from external threats. But I
assume you simply ignored or held in utter contempt (as you usually do)
ECSNorway's and my point about cops not being able to prevent crimes
except by deterrence? They cannot be everywhere. Nor would we want them to be. I don't want to live in a police state. I do want the option to own and carry a gun and protect myself. 

There is a distinct difference between a police state and being able to tell the police that people are making threats on your life and having them protect you. If your government refuses to do that job, I suggest you vote in people who will make that the governments job. Because like I said, the primary purpose of government is to prevent people from killing you.

The story was not meant to recommend
the kind of behavior that led to that point. I was only pointing out,
that when things had gone to hell, (fully acknowledging that the hell
was at least partially of Russell's own making) that in that one moment,
he made the only choice he could in order to live. And had he not had
that gun, he likely would not have lived. Because at that moment the police could not possibly have saved him. 

No, he didn't. He made the choice to go murder someone. There are many other choices that could have resulted in him living. And there was no gaurentee he would have survived his idiot plan. If one other person there had brought a gun and was stupid enough to use it your brother would be dead now.

We
are obviously talking about different countries and cultures here.
Several posters here are from Canada. Dartz is in Ireland. Etc. Do not
assume that just because I advocate gun rights and live in Texas that I
recommend Wild West vigilantism. I have a certain contempt for certain
aspects of how Police operate in this country currently. But that
doesn't mean I think they are utterly useless or that we should not
depend on them in certain circumstances. What I do say - is that you
can't act and make decisions based on the idea that they are going to
save your ass. YOU have to save your ass by making the right decisions
and not getting into trouble in the first place. The best the cops can
usually do is identify what and who killed you. It would be
better not to allow the circumstances to get to the point where you have
to defend yourself in the first place. But if you must, it's better to
have the proper tools to do so. And the BEST tool for saving your own
life versus someone who wishes to take it from you is a gun. 

No. The best tool to keep you alive when someone wishes to kill you is called society. Because society can bring a hell of a lot more force to bear in your defense than one shotgun every could.
If you think the sole role of the police is to punish crime, I don't know what to say to you. Police exist to maintain order, and part of that involves punishing crime but part of it also includes preventing crime. You don't have to wait until a terrorist blows up a building to arrest him, the conspiracy is enough. And if a drug dealer is conspiring with his friends to murder you, he has already commited a crime because threatening someone's life is a fucking crime. Heck, dealing drugs is a crime.
This reminds me of all that school bullying nonsense. Where a kid is being beaten up at school and the school administration clucks its tongue and refuses to do anything and the parents just suggest the kid take care of himself. It's not the kids job to take care of himself. It's the parents and teachers job to step in and stop that fucking bullshit. Similarly if people are threatening you with guns its the polices job to step in and stop that bullshit. If they aren't, then you have to change your system.
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Epsilon