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- ON AUGUST 9th Darren Wilson, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man. Two days after the shooting, tactical officers—paramilitary police generally referred to as SWAT (for Special Weapons and Tactics)—were called in to help clear protestors from in front of Ferguson's police department. They arrived dressed for war, in riot gear and gas masks, bearing long truncheons and automatic weapons—despite the fact that aside from some ugly looting incidents the day after the shooting, Ferguson's protests have largely been peaceful. In the days that followed, tactical officers have tear-gassed a news crew, aimed automatic weapons and sniper rifles at unarmed protestors and patrolled the streets of a small town in Missouri in vehicles that would not look out of place in Baghdad or Aleppo. The days of the beat cop walking the street with nothing more than a trusty old revolver seem distant indeed. How did America's police forces get so well-armed?