Almost universally not true. The Geneva convention prohibits many types of bullets that are allowed for civilian use. Hollow points, for example. And there are good reasons why they're allowed for civilians and not war.
2. It's not fair to give us a sanctimonious lecture about how great your country's police procedures are without stating your country. Put up, or drop the lecture.
I mean, imagine the chutzpah if you're German!
Besides, the policy I described is what (AFAIK) most of Europe implements at the moment (might be all of Europe even), including Germany. I don't quite see why stating that requires chutzpah.
That wasn't intended as a sanctimonious lecture at all, but since there already is a lot of "nothing less drastic could ever work" in the comments, I thought I'd give an example of another policy that works well. I'm well aware there is no police force or security apparatus without fault, they all get some things wrong (and some are outright atrocious, like in Belarus currently), not trying to make it sound like some EU police service is perfect. I don't know where the US police falls on that spectrum, though reading US news makes it seem like they do have some serious issues currently. This particular policy doesn't exactly help, either.
Sure, the military has access to more powerful rounds. Aircraft cannons, for example. But they don't typically load the soldier's rifles with rounds more powerful than what a civilian can buy.
- Soldiers' bullets really don't have more kinetic energy than civilian ones. For one, a civilian can always hand load, and get whatever K.E. they want (until they blow up their gun's chamber). Also, civilians can buy military rounds. Either surplus or whatever.
Smaller bullets means soldiers can carry more ammo. Not as important in the trenches of Europe, but crucial in the jungle colonial wars, I mean freedom wars, since WW2.
- Also, the military only wants a bullet powerful enough make it through any reasonable personal armor. The idea is that a bullet that isn't powerful enough to exit the body will cause more damage by tumbling inside and/or be more difficult to remove -> it's a way around the Geneva conventions that mandates rounds hold themselves together
- Third hunters, by law, have to use a bullet with a certain minimum K.E. The .30-06, for example, was initially used as a military round, but is today a popular deer hunting round. It has been replaced in the military by the much smaller, weaker, round used in the M-16.
The civilian .30-06 is considerably more powerful round than the AK-47's, whose round is considered too powerful for a modern rifle.
- Check out the perfectly legal, if expensive, .50 BMG.
Police get better ammunition for destroying human flesh, due to treaty restrictions on the military. Police can get all of the military small arms ammunition.
Police normally leave rifles locked up in their cars.
Well that's the problem, isn't it? You read news coverage of the US. The observational bias there is huge. Consider:
The US is a country of 320 million. As of Brexit, larger than the EU and homogeneously English speaking with homogeneous press and institutions. The EU is smaller with 23 languages or so and a patchwork of everything.
So if a Eastern EU cop beats the shit out of a homosexual in jail who would ever find out?
At least in Greece it's pretty well documented that cops sodomized Albanian migrant workers with broomsticks. But you wouldn't know that unless you happen to have an Albanian wife who lived in Greece.
An Italian squad of carabinieri was just disbanded because it turned out to be running a drug dealing and extortion racket. This is literally current news. Have you heard about it?
Spanish police took COVID as an opportunity to abuse their power. National scandal in Spain, I haven't read any non-Spanish (and I mean Spain Spanish, not Spanish language) news about it.
In Hesse police computers were used to find out the personal details of a left-wing politician to send them neo-Nazi affiliated threats. Armed agents of the Germany with neo-Nazi links is quite the scandal today in Germany.
Notice the bias in my examples:
Spanish police - I'm half Spanish
Italian police - I'm half Italian
Greek police - My wife is Greek speaking Albanian.
German police - I suspect you're German so I specifically googled German police abuse
Notice I don't have specific French police abuse examples... because I don't speak French! I'm sure a google search will quickly inform me of Algerians young men beat to a pulp by a gendarme.
In general, as EU citizen living in the US for over a decade, I find that the EU perspective of the US couldn't be more wrong.
[EDIT] grammer
But the cost on the detainee (who is to be presumed innocent, who may be in distress themself, who may have a psychotic episode due to some unknown cross-reaction with medication or the like, who may be deeply scared) is much, much, much higher, which is why this sort of thing almost never happens where I live (not the US, obviously).
I feel there are good reasons to assume that force-injecting someone with a megadose of Ketamine without their knowing what they're getting, understanding what they're getting into, competent assistance during what follows, in a profoundly bad state of mind, likely in deep fear, under heavy stress, while being restrained (otherwise, how would you inject?), with no knowlegde of their medical history or current condition, administered by laypeople, who would be completely useless in case of complications – I believe that isn't quite the same as tasing someone, or using pepper spray. While it's not visible in the way beating injuries are, that sort of thing has big potential to really deeply traumatize and mentally scar people for a long time.
Cops here do not have such powers and no one has tried to give them such powers, so far; I hope it stays that way. If someone has to be sedated, a doctor and an ambulance have to be summoned, and the then-patient has to be brought directly to a clinic that can take care of them; all in a medical setting from that point, not primarily an arrest (though, of course, depending on the situation, they may not be allowed to just leave once they're lucid again). This is only ever to be done in case of people in a psychotic episode that cannot be calmed otherwise or the like, it's not something to put into annoying detainees to make them shut up and be easier to handle. Any emergency doctor willing to inject such drugs without proper medical indication would take on big personal risks.
And, finally:
> Things are a mess if we deny the need to impose proper behavior by force.
Things are a mess as well if the tools to do so are passed out without checks and safety mechanisms that are appropriate to their effects. Letting cops shoot people at will while there are other, less severe options, that's awfully bad. And letting them drug people into submission while there are other, less severe options, that too is really bad.