Last week, the dangerous lives of police officers were put on display for all the world. Six officers were shot in Philadelphia trying to serve a warrant, showing just how dangerous police work can be.

Apparently, also last week, a lawmaker in Burlington, Vermont wants to disarm police in the city.

A Burlington City Councilor is mulling over whether police officers in the Queen City should be disarmed.

“How much is the lethal force — is it really causing at the end of the day, more harm than benefit?,” said Perri Freeman, a progressive representing the Central District.

She brought up the idea at a recent council meeting, saying communities should be thinking about new ways of policing in the United States. Freeman spent time in Iceland, where police are often unarmed, according to an article in The Washington Post.

Freeman argues there are times when police do need weapons, citing the recent mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso, but added that “the day in and day out of police work is not engaging with that.”

She hopes to change the culture of policing, calling current practices a reaction to systemic problems like inequality.

All me to just say that Freeman is a complete and total idiot.

No, the day-in, day-out of policing doesn’t require a firearm. However, the thing about police work is that you never know when the job will require it.

Freeman invokes mass shootings and things of that sort, but most officer-involved shootings are something different entirely. They’re the wanted felon pulled over on a traffic stop. They’re the officers showing up to a domestic violence call and not knowing quite what to expect. In reality, they’re any number of times when the police roll up to a scene to do their jobs and things suddenly go south on them.

What Freeman doesn’t understand, though, is the police don’t get to pick when they need to be armed.

Police officers have been targetted for assassination. The Dallas police shooting is the most notable example, but there have been others.

What she’s calling for isn’t going to de-escalate police work. It’s going to neuter officers and make it impossible for them to do their jobs effectively. It’s going to result in not just dead police, but dead citizens who officers are unable to protect. That would be on Freeman.

However, it’s not all Freeman’s fault. She’s deluded with this idea that everywhere not in the United States is better. In this case, Iceland.

Look, I find Iceland fascinating. It’s a definite stop on my bucket list. However, Iceland isn’t the U.S. by any stretch of the imagination. Police there don’t carry because police there haven’t needed to. It’s a safe country with a lot of factors contributing to that. Those factors don’t exist in the United States. Grabbing one isolated fact and somehow thinking that’s a good idea without looking at that fact as a part of a larger whole is ridiculous. For anything.

Trust me, if crime rates increased, Icelandic police would start carrying guns. They’d either have to or they’d have a hard time keeping police.

Not that it matters because, again, this isn’t Iceland.

Police in Burlington are going to need those firearms and Freeman can just learn to deal with her disappointment.

However, what really makes me angry is when she said this. Go look at the date of the original story. August 15, 2019. That’s the day after Philadelphia.

She just saw that six officers were shot trying to serve a warrant, but she calls for disarming police anyway. Pathetic.

Hat tip: Defensemave.io