Cops and killers

 Washington, DC

Considering how heavily its citizens are armed with pistols, hunting rifles, shotguns, military semi-automatics, crossbows and nunchucks, considering how ethnically diverse and historically divided the place is, and considering that it is home to a third of a billion more or less rootless people, it is surprising Americans don’t kill each other more. The United States is well policed, even if it has been hard to say so lately. In the space of a couple of days in July, black men were shot dead by policemen in two separate incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota. Video flew round the internet. A protest rally called in Texas became the site of a sniper attack by a wild-eyed (but well-trained) black nationalist Iraq War veteran, who killed five policemen and wounded seven others. The perception that police have an animus against young black men is largely an illusion.