Police officers killing innocent persons with impunity (and immunity) is essential to the nature of the state. Given that the state is an institution with a monopoly on the use of violence, to make functionaries of the state responsible for their wrongs is to erode that monopoly; to impose upon the state some standard higher than its own will. Such behavior is but an extension of the logic that underlies every state system, a truth the founders understood quite well when they created the Second Amendment as a partial check on that monopoly.

The Best of Butler Shaffer