Story highlights Peter Moskos: Enough. It's too easy to disassociate words from horrible actions. But words have power to inspire, inflame, provoke.

He says after shootings by and of police, both sides must tone it down and find common ground to solve crisis of violence

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer, is an associate professor in the department of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He is the author of "Cop in the Hood" and "In Defense of Flogging." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Enough.

It is too easy to disassociate words from horrible actions. But words have the power to inspire, inflame, provoke. Or else we wouldn't say them. When words inspire others to kill, however deranged those others might be, we must see the consequences.

Five police officers in Dallas are dead, killed during an otherwise peaceful protest over the shooting deaths of two African-American men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Peter Moskos

When those on the political right speak against immigrants, Muslims or abortion, those on the left are quick and correct to observe that words inspire crimes of hate and violence. Similarly, when those on the left speak against police officers -- not just bad ones, but all police officers -- this, too, can have consequences.

No matter one's beliefs, we all need to call out extremism and hate, especially given American's absurdly easy access to guns. No matter how many good people have guns, they cannot always stop a bad person with a gun. An armed society is clearly not always a polite society, so we need to tone it down.

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