On April 9, 2012, in a Town Meeting Ways And Means Committee meeting, a town meeting member asked police chief Steven B. Carl a couple of questions: How many automatic weapons does the Framingham police have? How much ammunition does the Framingham police purchase each year? The police chief would not respond to the questions because he felt offended by the questions. For all we know, they could have stockpiled enough automatic weapons and ammunition to kill us all. Do they think they are at war with the public? It turns out the Framingham police get a significant amount of monies from drug confiscations. In essence, they will never want to eliminate the War On Drugs since they have established a symbiotic relationship with its money supply. > The police are as bad as the drug cartels since both live on the money. The police have every financial incentive to perpetuate the War On Drugs.

Meanwhile, in Europe, according to Germany's Der Spiegel, German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, a stark reminder that not every country is as gun-crazy as the U.S. of A. As Boing Boing translates, most of those shots weren't even aimed anyone: "49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed." Technically, about 9,000 more shots were fired at sick and dangerous animals. (Germany, why do you kill your animals?) But since we couldn't watch the end of Old Yeller, we'll look the other way on those humanitarian shootings. Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the population is little less than four times the size of Germany's, well, we can get to 85 in just one sitting, thank you very much. 84 shots fired at one murder suspect in Harlem, another 90 shot at one fleeing unarmed man in Los Angeles. And that was just April. So we bring you Germany's shot total in case you forgot about America shoots itself in the foot with its manic love of guns.

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