Thread: Why frontline cops should be armed

Yes....from the time I was a kid to now it almost seems we have turned into a police state.
Yet all these laws only affect poor old muggins the working class.
The unemployed and minnimun wage earners have nothing to fear from the law...fine me ha ahahhha I cant pay a fine,comunity work a great place to socialise and network with other criminals or just dont go....A case a while back was 80grand of mostly boyracer fines, comunity work didnt go, then it was 3 months jail(might have even been one month) get your teeth fixed while your in there etc and then a handfull of cash on ya way out to set you off on the right track.

Fuck I cant even earn 80k before tax in a year let alone a month,pretty good wages.

Then you have the polys/police/govt depts/big businessmen....when was the last time you saw any of those do time for anything they did wrong?

Which leaves working middleclass who obey the laws generally because they cannot afford not to.

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Yes....from the time I was a kid to now it almost seems we have turned into a police state.
Yet all these laws only affect poor old muggins the working class.
The unemployed and minnimun wage earners have nothing to fear from the law...fine me ha ahahhha I cant pay a fine,comunity work a great place to socialise and network with other criminals or just dont go....A case a while back was 80grand of mostly boyracer fines, comunity work didnt go, then it was 3 months jail(might have even been one month) get your teeth fixed while your in there etc and then a handfull of cash on ya way out to set you off on the right track.

Fuck I cant even earn 80k before tax in a year let alone a month,pretty good wages.

Then you have the polys/police/govt depts/big businessmen....when was the last time you saw any of those do time for anything they did wrong?

Which leaves working middleclass who obey the laws generally because they cannot afford not to.

Yep I would love my bank to follow suit..........yea mate I will do 300 hrs community service and you take 80k of my mortgage.

Originally Posted by Tussock

I believe once the wealth gap swings to a certain point they stop referring to us as the middle/working class and go back to calling us "Peasants".

Originally Posted by jim160

But the media has never been good at identifying firearms. We all know that. They can never be relied upon to tell the accurate truth about anything.

The media willnever let the facts get in the way of a good story. Never mind the story.

More danger of being shot by a licensed hunter than a policeman.

True that

Originally Posted by Savage1

Police proudly quote the statistics.

It's the Police Association that is pushing for Police to be armed. The Police Association is like a union and is not part of the Police.

It's silly Greg o'Connor pushing this barrow. And he has his own agenda.

Originally Posted by 308

Vile, not vial and you missed the apostrophe on man's

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Kotuku's turn of phrase shares a lot with the stream of consciousness method used by James
Joyce who wrote "Ulysses" which is considered to be one of the high water marks of the English language.

Attacking his punctuation style misses the wider point and comes across as petty.

If you are trying to convince people of your argument, a little charm goes a long way..

Equating punctuation with intelligence is plain dumb. And ignorant. It might denote some education, but that's all.

Originally Posted by Danny

I cannot understand this thread although I read and accept most points of views- some are wildly generic and plain nonsense, reminding me of a relative of mine whom has a Dr in front of his name, he is often fucked when building a deck, changing a tyre or nappy or talking any sense at all.

The police ARE armed but unfortunately no one can foresee into a crystal ball. Police routinely 'tool' up when attending a certain address or addressing an individual because of the history that some have so those who have no idea should just mow their lawns or go pull their pud...that you may be actually qualified to do...

No one can pick a David Gray or a Napier situation or a random 3T in a back country road that turns bloody ugly within seconds. So we need to accept shit happens, the PC brigade will always squeak the loudest, police will always be under resourced, under trained-and that's another matter entirely imo but the Police work bloody hard to protect YOUR family and friends and property.

But...God I hope we never see the general public allowed to bare arms in public; (like America), that would be a bad day indeed.
Now, I'm off to pull my pudding.

I see bare arms in public all the time. some of them need shooting.

Originally Posted by MassiveAttack

So ignoring the tube vs the world side of the argument and summarizing my position:

Do I think NZ will ever introduce concealed carry? No, not a chance in hell.
Do I think NZ should introduced concealed carry? Yes, it's worth discussing even though it's unlikely to happen.

Why should we do this? Because every person has a right to self defence and that right is worthless if you don't have the tools to defend yourself. NZ is a safe country so generally this isn't something we have to worry about but there will definitly be people who are at risk and places that are more risky. This applies to both NZ police who should be expected to go into dangerious situations without the tools to defend themselves and the public of NZ (acknowledge that to own a firearm you need a FAL).

But wouldn't there be chaos with people shooting each other everywhere? This is the "think of the children" side of the argument and it comes down to culture. Every week there are groups of FAL holders who gather to shoot clays, targets, animals etc. During these events there are arguments etc and all the normal stuff that happens between people. Nobody gos and grabs a shotgun off the rack and starts shooting people cos thats just bloody stupid. Our culture says thats unacceptable and if you break that there are peanalties from both the social group you are in and the law. In the states if you have a CC permit and you pull your gun out and wave it around then you are breaking the law and will likely loose your CC permit. There is a culture around what is acceptable and what is not.

So what would change if in the unlikely event we were allowed this. Many pages ago somebody said that if a fight happend between a bigger and a smaller person then it would quickly descend into a gunfight. I see that as a good thing, if you are about to be beaten (potentially killed) by someone physically stronger than your self shouldn't you be allowed to defend yourself? The other effect is that people who beat others for fun would think twice about it cos they might have a gun...

In NZ if your house gets burgled then you are only allowed to resist if you life (not property) is in danger and then only with an appropriate level of force. If they have a baseball bat you are not allowed a knife etc If you grabbed the bloke and locked him in the bathroom until the Police arrived you would likely be charged with kidnapping.

In the USA there are a lot less burgleries because people who break into houses get shot. This depends on the state but if someone has broken into your house then you don't have to prove that your life was in danger, you just get to shoot them.

Now a liberal would say that a tv is not worth a human life and thats all bad but I say screw them, I want to live in a world where people who break into houses are more worried about their safty than the people living in the houses.

All of these opinions apply to the police as well. I have no problem with them being armed when the situation requires it and I think they shouldn't be visibly armed when it's not required. I don't think they (or anyone else) should have to risk their live due to lack of access to the right tools.

Would I use a firearm to defend myself in NZ? No because the legal peanalties are set up to discourage this and given storage requirements you would never be able to access it in time anyway. I would have to be convinced that myself or my family were about to die before I would risk my freedom that way. They can have the TV.

This is how far NZ has swung back the other way:
*In the live coverage of the chch earthquakes members of the public where tearing apart the rubble to try and rescue pople. Police officers stopped rescuing people and then threatened the members of the public with arrest unless they stopped cos the public is not qualified to rescue people and stopping that is more important than saving lives.

*If you shoot a burgler then you will end up on trial for murder.

*If you hold a burgler captive then you will end up on trial for kidnapping.

*A helicopter who defies a medical ban on flying to save the lives of two people is facing up to 10k in a year in jail.

*You can't import pepper spray because apparently thats dangerious and nobody needs to defend themselves.

What the hell happened? When did we turn into a nation of politically correct wusses?

When Mr Helen Clark ruled our world and started engineering the guts out of us.

umm-from the days of the krays etc -spraybottle fullof domestic cleaning ammonia ,a ladies rattail comb rolled up copy of the press ,even a wad of dunny paper freshly smeared with you know what -where the hell have you been all your life massive-do i have to teach you buggers all the naughty tricks.
best one Ive ever read was in the UK,where a coupla wannabe thugs confronted an old duck who;d just bought her Xmas leg'o ham
.she apparently swung it like Baz McCullum swung a cricket bat -the rozzers arrived only to have to phone an ambulance to cart two KO'd males to A&E as both were out for the count
.imagine tellin ya mates ya tried to rob an old sheila and she decked ya-sheeeesh thered be a few beers in that eh.

Well most of the coppers I see wandering around (emphasis on the round) look pretty 'armless. Think if they ever fell over they'd need assistance getting back on their feet. I thought these guys needed to pass a fitness test on a regular basis? Or has the test threshold been lowered like in pretty much every other realm of modern life.

Originally Posted by Smartie

More danger of being shot by a licensed hunter than a policeman.

per hour of firearm use police probably have way higher accidental shooting stats actually

In terms of actually pointing at a human, hunters would be winning that stat

I still suggest irrespective of hours spent with a firearm that your more likely to be shot by a hunter.