I’m not complaining about spotty enforcement of the law against American police, I’m complaining about things like qualified immunity or the thin blue line shit used to protect cops from consequences when they explicitly and clearly break the law. A regulation with less than perfect enforcement is still a regulation. A regulation with legal doctrine (QI) explicitly stating that it can be broken with no consequence however absolutely stops being a regulation.

I generally agree with the content of your second two paragraphs, but i do not see how they are relevant to discussion about whether the police can accurately be called an unregulated militia. Yes, law is subjective and generally defined by the mores of the society that follows it. “Cops don’t have to follow the law and should be allowed to murder people with no consequences” is absolutely not part of the zeitgeist

The fact that they commit less brazen violence than unregulated militias of the past doesn’t change the fact that they are unregulated militias. How many times have you read about the bastards being punished for “excessive force” (read, cold blooded murder in broad daylight), then found that their “punishment” was a few months of admin leave and a new job in another precinct? Regulations don’t exist unless they’re enforced, and we have a wildly long public record of cops breaking the law followed by the legal system choosing not to enforce the law in those cases.

We already have that. Cops with qualified immunity are almost definitionally an unregulated militia

Oh no! Did I hurt your feelings by clapping back when you insulted me on a shitpost comment chain? Your lack of self awareness is astounding

You’re right, that is incredibly dumb. Just not for the reasons you think it is. Imagine using iostream rather than stdio and unironically trying to clown on \n

Fuck endl, all my homies hate endl

It’s depressing how many top level comments or replies are about how people like that there is a technical barrier gatekeeping lemmy. Are yall actually leftists or do you just pretend to be while worshipping your own version of social hierarchy in which us nerds are on top?