You don't think it's important for a Constitutional Republic to ensure that when a cop and a soldier in daily work clothing are standing next to each other, that citizens can visually separate them? No one here has said cops shouldn't wear practical clothing and gear.
I was really just trying to make a joke, but it would definitely be the extreme outlier event that I would have any trouble visually distinguishing a cop and a soldier in daily work clothing.
As for the comparison between cops and other civilians, when I can go to the Walmart and buy the same gear the cops use, then we can talk about the hypocrisy of gun owners. When civilian cops can get the same gear the military uses, but other civilians can't, we have a problem.
Dude, you specifically have got more and way better personal equipment than 95% of cops are issued, with the likely and notable exceptions of comms and less lethal options.
Yeah, departments can get armored trucks and machine guns, but the vast majority of cops will never get those. You've got to pay extortionate taxes on SBRs and suppressors, but you own them and wouldn't stand for someone saying that you shouldn't have them because they're scary looking.
I'm not saying things are perfect and exactly as they should be, but I do think it is funny that we sometimes mock others for clutching pearls based on appearances, and other times clutch our own pearls based on appearances.
I doesn't make them scary, it enables them to do things they shouldn't. If you don't let them dress and equip themselves as door kickers, than they'll kick less doors.
There's some truth to this, but it's a little too focused. This is like saying "A scoped rifle enables sniping innocent people from a clock tower. If you don't let citizens get a scoped rifle, they'll snipe fewer people from clock towers." Sniping from clock towers isn't the only application of a scoped rifle, and besides, as people in some other countries have recently figured out, sometimes there are cases where clock tower sniping might be a handy capability for even the most righteous of citizens.
There's practicality to using an external carrier, and if you're using an external carrier there's practicality to putting some of your equipment on it. Sure, it also looks cool, but saying that police should use less functional clothing and gear because they might misuse it is silly. If the focus is on what they're doing wrong, by all means criticize their wrongdoing.
I'm just saying lot of these fashion critiques are misplaced. Cops and soldiers have very different missions, but both require they wear a level of armor and carry a bunch of crap on their person. It shouldn't be a surprise that there is some crossover when it comes to functionality.
