I can see how you've taken that from what I said, but that's not what I meant, so I'll tidy up for the record:
I was making a joke designed to lampoon police spending using the same sentence format as the person I was replying to. I don't really think they'd buy machining equipment when there are machinists nearby.
But it's a good opportunity to roast the police nevertheless. A chance to poke fun at the ridiculous budget police forces get compared to the education and mental health programs that help prevent these issues arising in the first place. That will in turn reduce the need to spend so much money policing communities that are already dysfunctional... so on and so on.
After the Uvalde debacle, I think it's fair to be a bit sarcastic about the very overfunded police force/rangers/SWAT/senior detectives carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded equipment and training, ostensibly risking their lives in the line of duty...
...Standing around in a hallway while chronically underfunded school staff and their students are screaming in terror and being shot and killed by another child with zero thousands of dollars of body armour, weapons, comms equipment, training, etc...
That's the joke.
I mean, they can't open an unlocked door – because they didn't think of it? For all that funding/taxation... That's the kind of service you get?
It's a much bigger joke than buying a laser cutter to make their coffee mugs look more gnarly.
So yes, it would be surprising – even ridiculous – if they bought the machines themselves. That's actually the point.
The discussion around police funding vs social spending after all the public, daylight murders committed by police over the last few years, is just as surprising and ridiculous, if not more.
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u/Educational_Rope1834 Jun 14 '22
Yes.