Micheal Moore is famous for his documentaries on everything from 9/11 to corporate corruption. But now he’s taking on the issue of police brutality and murder of unarmed citizens in the United States. He’s promoting a radical solution: disarm the police.
Moore tweeted his demand that police be disarmed on April 30th, explained that in addition to this, community healing could come after “every African-American currently incarcerated for… nonviolent offenses [is] released from prison today.”
The first tweet was posted at 3:16 a.m., in which Moore wrote: “Imprison you, shoot you, sever your spine, crush your larynx, send you to war, keep you poor, call you a thug, not let you vote. But you can sing for us.”
Nearly an hour later, at 4:03 a.m, Moore added, “Here’s my demand: I want every African-American currently incarcerated for drug ‘crimes’ or nonviolent offenses released from prison today.”
Before turning in for the night, at 5:05 a.m, Moore concluded, “Next demand: Disarm the police. We have a 1/4 billion 2nd amendment guns in our homes 4 protection. We’ll survive til the right cops r hired.”
The United States Constitution protects the rights of citizens going about their business to be armed for self-defense. But when the Bill of Rights was written, there was no such thing as community policing in the United States, or even in Britain, where it would be conceived of, decades later, in 1812.
This has led some to conclude that the Second Amendment does not protect the “right” to be armed while “policing” citizens, but is instead the right to self-defense for people who are, essentially, minding their own business, and not those who are actively getting in the middle of potentially volatile arguments, where the presence of a firearm on the person “policing” conflict could (and often does) escalate the situation that could have otherwise been neutralized non-violently.