The funny thing is I ' m not even sure you know WHY the cops are so militarized in the first place . You see in the late 80 ' s there was a huge increase in drug related violence . In 1990 , the National Defense Authorization Act allowed the DOD department of defense to transfer military guns and weapons that were suitable for use in counter drug activity . Then in 1997 , you have the famous , or to people like yourself call it , infamous 1033 program which was created by the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1997 as part of the U . S . Government ' s Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services DLA to transfer excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies and signed into law by President Bill Clinton he ' s a Democrat , right ? on Sept 23 , 1996 . Since then , you have a decrease in drug related homicides since both were passedBJS Drugrelated crimerelatedMight want to check that nifty chart where it shows a gradual decrease in drug related homicides from when it peaked in 1991 until the present day . Is there relationship there between the two ? You can make an argument there certainly is . So the five alarm dumpster fire you talk about doesn ' t take into consideration WHY this was started in the first place huge surge in drug related crimes Or why its still being used to arm and train police departments all over the country . Maybe if you knew that , or maybe lived in one of those high crime areas ever hear of Robert Taylor HomesXxn 9 IPJsS 4 or maybe Cabrini GreensDo 6 bXrz 5 J 8 ? then you might welcome some law order in lawless places like that . As for your privatization of prisons gripe , if you were reading my previous statement , then you know there was a huge uptick in drug related crime in the 1980 ' s and through till the 1990 ' s . This resulted in a huge tax on the prison system and a huge influx of prisoners . I ' m also sure since you ' re so well read , you probably remember a lot of stories about overcrowding and prisons being well beyond their capacity , right ? The only problem was that US Prison system had a problem . It couldn ' t build any more prisons because it just ran out of money . The current facilities were too old and needed upgrades . They didn ' t have enough money to build new ones , so they did what anybody in that situation does they figured they ' d let someone else pay for it . This is where the privatization of prisons started . They got some investment money together and some business men started the CCA or the Corrections Corporation of America . The plan was to build a prison , then lease their beds to the state and turn a tidy profit . Judging by their website it looks as though they ' ve built more than a few prisons . The interesting this is CCA was a huge contributor to Hillary ' s campaign . CCA paid Akin Gump a well known Clinton bundler over $ 240 K in lobbying fees last year . One of Akin Gump ' s own lobbyists Brian Popper disclosed that he helped CCA defeat efforts to compel private prisons to respond to FOIA requests . To lay this on Conservatives just shows how incredibly UNinformed you are . Not to mention having no idea as to why or how we got here in the first place . If you did know everything I just said , I ' d be shocked if you still concluded even with this evidence that Conservatives are to blame for all of this .