As I watch news coverage of yet another shooting of an African-American by a police officer during a simple traffic stop in Minneapolis, I wonder why an officer's only choice to defend himself is a lethal gun. When a horrible mistake is made and the officer fires the gun when it wasn't necessary, a human life is lost. Ideally, in every situation, a police officer wouldn't make a mistake or escalate a situation where it was unnecessary, but if that does happen, if the officer's first line of defense was a non-lethal device, a human life would not be lost.
We can't rely on local law enforcement to come up with their own non-lethal solutions. We need the federal government to put together a task force to do the research and standardize on non-lethal options to be used across the nation.
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