Part of the reason these guns gained prominence was fear of drugs such as PCP, and part of it was talk that police are being outgunned. For the first, PCP, has largely disappeared form the streets. Cops aren t getting killed because they re outgunned, they re getting killed because they re getting put out on the street without adequate training. This report was titled the war on dissent. In closing it s important to note what dissent is.
Most political struggle is based on survival.
As a bottom line, dissent is often just trying to survive. The black person who can t drive a car without being pulled over, or even walk down certain streets, as happens routinely in Seattle, is forced to dissent. So is the logger who s got nothing left to cut and finds the only way they can keep their home is to grow certain herbs in the backwoods, inviting the wrath of the local sheriff and the national guard. So s the person who crawls into a sleeping bag in some out of the way place downtown. The corporate and colonial powers have always responded more brutally the further they were operating away from their home base.