It's been awhile, so let's talk about killing cops.

Thanks to Scott, I found a great music bootleg site, That Truncheon Thing. While digging through their archives and sampling fond music of yester-year, I came across an interesting cover, Arcade Fire doing The Clash's Guns of Brixton. While I'm a fan of AF, and a rabid devotee to the posing kids from South London, this cover kind of left me cold.

The minutes weren't wasted though, as the lack of Paul's accent allowed to me to really think about the first few lines of Guns of Brixton:

"When they kick out your front door, How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head, Or on the trigger of your gun.
When the law break in, How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement, Or waiting in death row
You can crush us, You can bruise us,But you'll have to answer to Oh, Guns of Brixton"

Obviously, about taking the law into your own hands, if the cops try to take it out of yours. A great example of anti-establishment Clash, this is seen as a classic from the band, and in the genre as a whole. Funny though, that I've never heard the stigma and furor attached over those lyrics, which are an obvious paen to shooting an officer of the law, as I have to these:

"I got my black shirt on, I got my black gloves on, I got my ski mask on.
This shit's been too long, I got my twelve gauge sawed off, I got my headlights turned off.
I'm 'bout to bust some shots off.
I'm 'bout to dust some cops off."

True enough, Ice-T's Cop Killer is a bit more aggressive. But as the rest of the song will say, it's more about taking back rights that have been rendered forfeit because of the color of his skin, rather than just going on a random killing spree.

In the end, what's the difference between the songs, and why the notable difference in the outcry? Was the murder of police officers more accepted twenty years earlier? Was the culture difference between the UK and the USA so great that this type of thing raised no eyebrows? Or was it because while you can be poor and angry, if you're poor, black, and angry you frighten the crap out of people.