We came to the bridge which had marked the terminal point of two previous attempts. On one of those attempts, King had turned his people back at this spot. On the other attempt, the state troopers had ridden into the crowd with clubs, and bullwhips, and tear gas. We paused there a moment, just to remember, and then we moved out on the highway. It was a divided highway, and the North side was reserved for us. Every few yards a soldier stood with a rifle and bayonet. Army cars drove ahead of us and behind us. In the air five helicopters circled endlessly, occasionally swooping down just above a clump of trees or bushes. Radios and walkie-talkies crackled orders back and forth. State troopers drove by in squad cars, two to a car. One drove, and the other quite ostentatiously took pictures of the marches. This is an Alabama form of intimidation. I kept remembering that these were the same state troopers who had two weeks earlier had ridden mercilessly into a defenseless mass of people! I marveled again at the power of the federal government whose presence stood between us and another massacre.

Words are loaded pistols.

Only Southerners have taken horsewhips and pistols to editors about the treatment or maltreatment of their manuscript. This — the actual pistols — was in the old days, of course, we no longer succumb to the impulse. But it is still there, within us.

Clyde: I wondered why he had his hand on his hip when I shot him.

The physical layout of the P90 is very unusual the first time an operator sees it. The grips underneath the weapon are oddly curved with elongated holes above them to allow the fingers to wrap over the grip. Once the weapon is picked up, the style of holding the weapon dictated by the layout of the grips becomes automatic.

[...] The image superimposed on Ricci's field of view by his visor display showed a pair of guards in hooded parkas, goggles, and wool scarves taking relaxed strides along their patrol of the building's north side. Their shoulder-slung FN P90 assault weapons fired the same ammunition as his FN Five-seveN pistol: small rounds, big punch. [...]

No cop was ever born who isn't a sucker for a finely-executed hi-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those clover-leaf freeway interchanges. Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side when he sees the big red light behind him... and then we will start apologizing begging for mercy. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. The thing to dowhen you're running along about a hundred or so and you suddenly find a red-flashing CHP-tracker on your trail what you want to do then is accelerate.

I had to calm down because a state trooper pulled up alongside me at a traffic light and began looking at me with that sort of casual disdain you often get when you give a dangerously stupid person a gun and a squad car.

On this trip there was no minute of time while travelling between San Patricio and the settlements on the San Antonio River, from San Antonio to Austin, and again from the Colorado River back to San Patricio, when deer or antelope could not be seen in great numbers. Each officer carried a shot-gun, and every evening, after going into camp, some would go out and soon return with venison and wild turkeys enough for the entire camp.

The answer must be: even-handedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters.

Wilder went into his sons' bedroom. Glad to see Wilder, they banged their empty feeding-bowls with their plastic machine-pistols. They were dressed in miniature paratroopers' camouflage suits and tin helmets — the wrong outfit, Wilder reflected, in light of what had been taking place in the high-rise. The correct combat costume was stockbrokers' pin-stripe, briefcase and homburg.

Poetry and pistols, wine and women.

Houses were never sanctuaries. The Gestapo often conducted their arrests between midnight and five in the morning. It appeared that at any instant the door could open, allowing a cold breath of night air to blow in, and three friendly Germans with revolvers.

Police weren’t getting out of their cars to meet people as much anymore. They were more and more riding around alone, understandably fearful in the toughest neighborhoods, sometimes in surplus military and paramilitary equipment that made them look like invaders instead of protectors. Dramatic footage of high-profile deaths