Some people are naturally sociable and well-behaved. They’re polite. They don’t try or even want to harm others. For such persons, the law is not really necessary. Their own in-born characters do the work that the law is intended for.
But other people are not like that. They are naturally disposed toward behaviors that lead to social breakdown if they are not kept in check. For such persons, the law is a necessity. As 1 Tim. 1:9 says, “the law is laid down not for the righteous but for the lawless and disobedient.”
At the same time, law is impotent by itself if there’s no one to enforce it. There is a law against murder, but that mere fact by itself does not stop anyone from murdering. A person could just as well commit a murder if he thought he could get away with it.
In fact, the existence of a law by itself is neither sufficient nor necessary to stop a murder! Even if there were no law against murder, a person might still be prevented from committing a murder if he thought there was a significant chance he would be punished for it.
This shows that the law, if it is to be effective at all, must be supplemented by an efficient police force. Persons who commit crimes must be dealt with as quickly and as efficiently as possible, so that those who are tempted to commit crimes will be convinced not to test their luck. As the apostle Paul says, “If you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the agent of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4).
This line of reasoning seems very clear and simple to me. There is a law, and there is an agent of God who enforces the law. He’s there to be a terror to the wrongdoer. He doesn’t “bear the sword in vain.” For that reason, I can’t understand why people respond with such strong moral indignation to the idea of an efficient police force.
For example, why should you object to the National Guard’s being deployed in major cities where the murder rates are comparable to third-world countries? Why would you oppose stopping murder and crime? Or why should you want ordinary police to be as inefficient as possible against criminals? Watch this video of Irish police officers struggling with impotent batons against a madman with a knife. Or why would you oppose putting an armed guard on subways or light rails? It could have prevented the death of Iryna Zarutska.
Perhaps some people are worried about the specter of totalitarianism, but I think that fear is exaggerated. Police are for enforcing the laws. Having an efficient police force means enforcing the actual laws efficiently. It does not mean expanding the laws so as to become ever more oppressive to ordinary people. There is a golden mean somewhere between totally impotent policing and George Orwell’s 1984, and I’m not sure we’ve reached it. If we could put pseudomathematically, totalitarianism = oppressive laws + highly efficient policing. If you remove the oppressive laws, the equation no longer holds, and we are not dealing with totalitarianism anymore.
Obviously it would be preferable to live in a society where you don’t see armed police very often. Nobody likes it. But it seems clear to me that we don’t have the population for that kind of life. You cannot just live however you want in any conditions. As Jesus said, you cannot get grapes from thorns or figs from thistles (Matt. 7:16). Likewise, you cannot have a peaceable and nonviolent society when there are so many violent persons around.