Rand Paul made an observation about this case, for which he's taking flak. He should have chosen his words better.
He said:
"I think it's hard not to watch that video of him saying, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,' and not be horrified by it," Paul said. "But I think there's something bigger than the individual circumstances. ... I think it's also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so that's driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, 'Hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.'... For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws."
What's true about that statement is that, when politicians write laws, the laws must be enforced. The police must use whatever means necessary to enforce the laws. In this case they had to take the guy to the ground, and he died. If there had been no tax on cigarettes, or at least no tax so high that a profit can be made from selling them illegally, then there would have been no reason for the police to even approach Garner. But they had to, because some politicians wrote that law.
Politicians never seem to take into account the fact that the laws they write must, in the worst case scenarios, be enforced using lethal force.
