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Mike's Minute: It's time to have a serious talk about guns

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Tue, 23 Jun 2020, 9:27AM

Mike's Minute: It's time to have a serious talk about guns

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Tue, 23 Jun 2020, 9:27AM

It's always tricky to raise certain issues amid a mood of heightened tension. But is it not sensible and realistic to ask several questions around guns as a result of Friday's tragedy? 

Is a gun in the back of a police car, when an incident can turn so dangerous, so quickly, really of any great use? How many times, rightly or wrongly, have we heard that gun crime is increasing? That's backed up by the stats.  

More and more incidents are turning ugly, if not potentially deadly, too fast for the current policy of not having armed police to continue.

The new Police Commissioner has made what I would deem a very soft and unspectacular start to his job. He defended community led road blocks and he favours police not carrying weapons as a normal part of policing. He looks wrong on both counts.

For those who argue against arming police, the vast majority aren't actually police. They don't deal with gangs and criminals, and would not be remotely interested in taking on the responsibility our heroes in blue do every single day. That's part of it.

The other part is the cold hard truth that the person who shot and killed the police officer is not one of the thousands who gave up their weapons in the government's buyback. The buyback was premised on the delusion that if we got a lot of guns out of the hands of gun owners we would be safer.

We are not. We never were. It was a desperate and foolish reaction to a tragedy from a government that wanted to be seen to be doing something large and tangible, and had nothing else by way of a response.

The only guns that got handed in or sold were the ones that belonged to people who had never bothered the law, and never would have.

Are there fewer guns? Yes. But, so what? Does it stop the crazies getting their hands on them? Has it halted gang activity? Has it seen gun crime drop?

No, no, and no.

Effective policy has an obvious outworking. This policy hasn’t, doesn’t, and won't.

The simple truth, sadly, is bad people do bad things, and increasingly they do them with guns. You either meet that with a response that’s effective, or you don’t.

If you don’t, the good guys end up dead. 

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