Thread: Why frontline cops should be armed

Originally Posted by MassiveAttack

Thats not true. My wife is a social worker in a rural area so her job involves going out to the middle of nowhere (often with no cellphone reception) visiting people who come from the poorer section of our socieity. The bloke who went in insane and shot up the Ashburton Winz office last year had made up a list of people he was going to kell and my wife's boss was on the list. Luckerly for her he didn't get very far down the list on his insane murder day.

So she encounters threats on a daily basis and unlike police officers she doesn't have a radio, pepper spray, training or backup. Legally she isn't even allowed pepper spray.

If this was the states I would buy her a glock and send her on a training course to teach her how to use it. It wouldn't prevent all situations but at least it's something.

If you look at safty statistics the police generally do far worse than civilians. There has only been one injury at a civilian rifle range but there have been many at police ranges. Your average police officer spends less time being trained than I did to become a IT guy and has less firearms handling experiance than the average hunter bloke. Most average hunter blokes are scary unsafe people who I wouldn't want to stand in front of while they were holding a gun...

When was the last time your wife was deployed to a domestic/disorder/warrant at such addresses? Slightest hint of trouble who do they call? Police. I've passed no end of fire fighters/paramedics/social workers to enter addresses because they're unwilling to do so, it's not their job and I think no less of them holding back.

Your wife may face "threats" if that is what you want to call that sector of society, but she faces them in the social worker role, not in a Police role where you are, more often than not, there against their wishes and are likely to deny them of their freedom. Policing is confrontational at the physical level, hardly comparable to social working.

Like I said earlier, I'm neutral when it comes to carrying weapons for defence, I just don't know whether the risks outweigh the benefits.

In regards to range safety, where are the statistics? I haven't looked into it but the only injuries I can recall is a broken leg and a stroke whilst on the range, never heard of a GSW but I could be wrong. The training they do is different to what the average civilian does on a range, vehicle stops, transitions etc.