Does gun control contribute to militarization of police?

The drive towards calling the enemy 'insurgents' and 'combatants' was started by the Bush administration in their desire to sidestep the Geneva Conventions.

If they are indeed called the enemy then they would have more protections under law, not less.

I would argue that police militarization's more an issue of a decaying 4th amendment than 2nd.

The biggest contributor is likely the so called war on (some) drugs, in conjunction with statues enabling abuses of asset forfeiture (which typically funds gear) has done more to militarize the police than gun control. That, and the influx of recently cashiered ex military who find police work a good resume match.

Ash is absolutely correct. The imbecilic pretense that we're not fighting a war has been what's led to the circumlocutions you find so deplorable, and the intent behind that pretense was to break the law, plain and simple. The alternative, of course, is to admit that we need to treat these prisoners according to the rules laid out in the Geneva Convention, which is the Constitutionally adopted law of the land.

And arresting "people who want to kill Americans" and putting them through a court trial is just exactly what we should be doing to, say, the Hutari as well. Somehow I suspect that's not what you had in mind, despite the fact that it's awfully difficult to come up with a clear distinction between them and the Taliban. After a while the religious extremists all start to look alike.

It's gets boring hearing this repeated invocation of the Geneva Convention. If, indeed, we were to fully abide by the Convention, then every one of these people we've "detained" would be classified as illegal combatants, and subject to summary execution. That's what the Convention prescribes for combatants who hide behind civilians, deliberately target civilian populations, and don't wear uniforms. Is that really what people are advocating?

Ken -- I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Geneva Convention authorizes "summary executions", but I assure you it's not true. Though the Conventions do allow for the death penalty to be implemented, that's only after a legal trial and sentencing, which the vast majority of these people have not had.

Ken, the Geneva Convention is there to *prevent* summary executions during wartime.

""No sentence shall be passed and no penalty shall be executed on a person found guilty of an offence except pursuant to a conviction pronounced by a court offering the essential guarantees of independence and impartiality."

(Second Protocol of the Geneva Conventions (1977) Art 6.2)

The reality in WWI, WWII and Korea was something along the lines of the senior officer who captured someone armed and not wearing a uniform uniform gave any of his troops a chance to object that they guy actually was wearing a uniform. Absent such objection, the offending person was shot on the spot. That's they way they did it; that's the way we did it. I certainly don't recall anybody being charged at Nuremberg for following that procedure.

Ken -- Just to be clear, has your argument morphed from the incorrect "the Geneva Convention has provisions for summary executions" to the immoral, illegal, and despicable "well, we've been breaking our own laws since we adopted them, why bother to start following them now?"

Because that's what it looks like from here.

Also, you think this wasn't covered at Nuremberg? I believe it was, though the far more applicable precedent is that of the Dachau Trials, where Otto Skorzeny was tried.

In the Malmedy massacre trial (at Dachau), 73 members of the Waffen-SS were found guilty of summarily executing 84 American prisoners of war during the attack. In another trial, Otto Skorzeny was found not guilty of war crimes, for wearing American military uniforms in a false flag operation.

Samantha Joy, I'm confused by your argument. The 84 American prisoners of war were in U.S. uniform and subject to the Geneva Convention.

My understanding was that spies in civilian clothing were not protected by the conventions and subject to summary execution as specified under local law.

Are there no more "spies"?

Jim, I am certain that there are spies aplenty (and that many of them are employed by the US Gov't). However (at least according to both the Human Rights Watch and my own readings of the articles involved) they are also protected by the Conventions.

Detainees in an armed conflict or military occupation are also protected by common article 3 to the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits "[v]iolence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; …outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
Even persons who are not entitled to the protections of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (such as some detainees from third countries) are protected by the "fundamental guarantees" of article 75 of Protocol I of 1977 to the
Geneva Conventions. The United States has long considered article 75 to be part of customary international law (a widely supported state practice accepted as law). Article 75 prohibits murder, "torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental," "corporal punishment," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, … and any form of indecent assault."

Emphasis mine. Source (PDF File)

Note, though, that the Articles mentioned above didn't get ratified by the US until 1955, and so weren't in force during WWII, and hence aren't likely to be recognized by those whose major source of historical information is WWII movies. :)

When you afford the protections the Geneva Conventions provide to lawful combatants to unlawful combatants, you remove the only practical sanction against illegal warfare techniques. Now, summary execution isn't typically allowed, but a full trial isn't required. A field trial where the evidence is reviewed, thirty days confinement to allow for any appeals, THEN a bullet in the back of the head is perfectly within reason. And the 1977 amendments were introduced by the Soviets especially to protect the various insurgency groups they had sponsored in an attempt to undermine Western civilization. Oh, and the trial isn't necessarily about their guilt or innocence as far as war crimes, it's about whether a particular individual can be categorized as an unlawful combatant, if they're an unlawful combatant, they forfeit the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions and can be dealt with as the capturing power desires, although it is typically considered that it still must be done humanely (torture is out, execution is in).

James, the only reference I can find this evening to that positions is from the 1874 conventions

Spies

Art. 19. A person can only be considered a spy when acting clandestinely or on false pretenses he obtains or endeavours to obtain information in the districts occupied by the enemy, with the intention of communicating it to the hostile party.

Art. 20. A spy taken in the act shall be tried and treated according to the laws in force in the army which captures him.

So it seems that if being a spy is punishable by death in the country where you're caught, then you're right!

James said:
When you afford the protections the Geneva Conventions provide to lawful combatants to unlawful combatants, you remove the only practical sanction against illegal warfare techniques.

I'm not sure that that's true, and I'm pretty sure it's irrelevant even if it is true. Right now we're (illegally) using imprisonment and torture as sanctions; if you want to argue that because they're illegal that they're also impractical, I can understand that, but seeing as how murder is also illegal, I don't see how it's a much more effective technique.

So, since torture and imprisonment don't seem to be effective, I'm not sure that fear of death is going to be an effective deterrent either, especially against an enemy that has a religious incentive to look forward to dying in combat.

Regardless, the laws of our country have never been about how others behave, but about how we behave. When we ratified the GCs, we didn't agree to stick to them only if the country we were fighting did the same.

A field trial where the evidence is reviewed [...] [A]nd the trial isn't necessarily about their guilt or innocence as far as war crimes, it's about whether a particular individual can be categorized as an unlawful combatant, if they're an unlawful combatant, they forfeit the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions

. . . I have absolutely no idea where you've come up with such an idea.

Here's what the International Committee of the Red Cross (to whom signatories to the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols have given the ICRC a formal mandate to protect the victims of armed conflicts) has to say about it:

Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law.

And for the record, I have absolutely no problem with the idea that we might fairly try, convict, sentence to death, and then execute every one of the people held in Gitmo. I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty but I prefer rule of law to scofflaws running the country, any day.

I'm going off my memory of what a former instructor in the laws of land warfare at the Army War College has said, I trust him more than I trust the ICRH. I suggest you look closely - GCIV defines a "protected person", that definition does not include someone who violates the laws of land warfare by fighting without a distinguishing uniform (beyond the early stages of resistance to an invasion), uses human shields, falsely uses protected symbols (white flag, red cross, red crescent, etc), fights outside a recognizable chain of command, etc... The issue of piracy is another one that international law has flubbed - how do you deal with a pirate when the laws of the country in whose waters they operate are insufficient? Let them go (well, I guess you can, the Russian way, in a small boat at sea with no navigation aids and presumably no supplies, which disappears from radar an hour later)? What if we are operating in a country in which there is no judicial sanction against killing foreigners and capture combatants who do not follow the requirements of the Geneva Conventions to be considered lawful combatants? Are we to just let them go, since under THEIR LAWS their actions are legal?

I've changed my mind. It's no longer boring.

James, once you're telling me that you're relying on a memory of what someone who may or may not have known what he was talking about told you once over the word of the internationally recognized authority, you're telling me that you've made up your mind to believe what you want to believe.

I'm not going to bother arguing with your memory of what someone told you once. I'm sure that like every other human, your memory is utterly infallible and every sentence uttered during your college education is with you forever.

I'm also not going to bother knocking down the strawmen you've set up for me there. (Seriously, though? "But what if we go to war in a place that doesn't have laws against murder?" is the best you could come up with? Just how hard did you try?)

Anyway. I'm out. Best to you.

The Miranda issue you mention was probably brought up probably refers to Faisal Shahzad. When the people we're detaining are non-US citizens, captured in a foreign country, I think there is a much stronger case that US laws don't apply. But when the person is a US citizen, arrested by a police agency (not a military agency), then I'm very concerned to see the revocation of Miranda rights being considered. At the time that people were talking about revoking Miranda, the only thing we knew was that this guy was a brown-skin and had an Arabic name. The government arrests the wrong person all the damn time, and the Constitutional protections that Miranda embodies are there to protect all of us. I don't want to live in a country where all it takes to get Miranda revoked is a police agency saying, "He's the guy."

The ICHR is a non-governmental organization with an agenda. Automatically believing them is as dangerous as automatically rejecting what they say.

And it's NOT a strawman, GCIV presumes that there are civilian laws that can be employed against any nonmilitary personnel who are captured by an occupying force, but many countries with legal codes based on religion treat crimes against members of the state religion differently than crimes against followers of other religions. Legal codes that incorporate Sharia law en toto would include those parts of Sharia law that mandate death to members of certain other religions, including Buddhists, Hindus, and Wiccans.

Furthermore, it requires a level of evidence gathering and handling that typically can't be managed in a combat environment, and our soldiers are being killed because they are hesitating to take shots due to concerns about being prosecuted if some JAG officer 2000 miles away decides they didn't properly dot all their 'i's and crossed all their 't's. When my brother was in Iraq, they had a real concern that if they saw someone shoot at them, that person started to run behind a barrier that obscured part of their body and dropped whatever weapon he was using, and they shot him, they could be prosecuted because he didn't have a weapon in his hands at the time he was shot.

I'm much more concerned with the police treating citizens like enemies on the battlefield, than I am about our soliders not being nice enough on foreign soil.