While I don't disagree...

....that the militarisation of the US police forces has become ridiculously over the top (and note that a significant part of it is due to Congress and the Pentagon thinking that recycling military equipment is a thrifty and useful thing to do), I find myself a bit chagrined when those Americans of a libertarian bent get upset about it, because of their support of the other side the ledger (the public) being armed to the back teeth.

Mark Steyn's recent column, for example, quotes with approval the tiny number of police shootings in other Western countries compared to the US.   Yet this is him talking before about his home State:

New Hampshire has a high rate of firearms possession, which is why it has a low crime rate.  You don’t have to own a gun, and there are plenty of sissy arms-are-for-hugging granola-crunchers who don’t.  But they benefit from the fact that their crazy stump-toothed knuckle-dragging neighbors do.  If you want to burgle a home in the Granite State, you’d have to be awfully certain it was the one-in-a-hundred we-are-the-world panty-waist’s pad and not some plaid-clad gun nut who’ll blow your head off before you lay a hand on his seventy dollar TV.

Is it such a stretch for Steyn to imagine that police in a place where (as he thinks is fantastic) nearly every household has a gun (or on the street, anyone might be carrying a concealed gun) might be more inclined to shoot first in many situations?