Then again. If Police were armed. Offender may see the need to arm himself..
I've heard this argument before and it simply doesn't wash with me. Do you�not think that offenders are armed already? I assure you they�are. Just look at any drug raid or gang raid and� the cache of weapons that are inevitably always found. To say�that if police�become armed means that suddenly the offenders will too is incorrect - they are already armed. Interestingly the reason they are armed is not to protect themselves from police, its to protect themselves from each other (i.e. drug taxings etc). There is�a huge amount of�money at stake in the drug trade and the gangs�will do whatever�it takes to ensure noone else moves into their patch.
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It seems to me that here in NZ cops are getting shot at on a fairly regular basis (8 shootings in the last 5 years wth two dead), whereas if you look at NSW for example -�where every officer carries a gun, they hardly ever have to use them. I assume this is because offenders know that if they are�stupid enough�to threaten an officer with a deadly weapon they are likely to be shot, so they choose not to.
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I�think the lock box�idea is a good one.�I'm not comfortable with the idea of cops patrolling our malls�etc carrying a firearm,�but it seems�that for any firearms situation the biggest enemy�to�the victim/s�is�the delay it currently takes for police to become armed (e.g. the�Navtej Singh homicide), so a handgun in every patrol car makes perfect sense to me.
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From the countless conversations we had. The officers who I worked with were more nervous about the general criminal carrying firearms rather than knives or things like that. And by general I mean.. Robberies, burglers and the likes. Not so much gangs, as yes, they are already mostly armed to the teeth. But they saw the risk that those gangs starting to take the weapons with them.Stefan2010-10-15 04:50:16
"Phoenix till they lose"