MudMan , 8 days ago

No, the notion that

Despite being less accountable than normal citizens for it, the state has monopolized violence to be acceptable for them to commit, but unacceptable for others

is no more true in the US than Finland or France. All modern countries legally prevent their citizens from taking violent action. This is normal. It's intended, it's a good thing.

The problem is with accountability for the agents of the state, which has nothing to do with the monopoly on violence, it has to do with the criminal system and how the use of that violence is controlled.

If you say the monopoly on violence is the issue with the US's police violence issue what you're saying isn't that the police should be controlled better in their deployment of force, you're saying that individuals should be able to shoot back at the police or, in fact, at anybody else they don't like.

Which is clearly already way too frequent in the US. The interpretation of exceptions to enable private violence, be it the right to bear arms or the insane "stand your ground" rules and other expansive interpretations of legitimate defense are part of the problem. The state's monopoly on violence in the US is too lax, not too strict. Which is mostly unrelated with the fact that the state deploys violence unjustly or without enough accountability or limitation.

Those are different things. I don't think you mean what your statement is implying, I think you mean the other thing, but that's what you're saying and you can probably see how that's a problem.