Thread: Why frontline cops should be armed

Originally Posted by Savage1

I believe conceal carry is a separate matter and shouldn't be used as a reason for or against Police arming. Police go to threats an encounter a lot of threats on a daily basis, their role can't be compared to a civilian in everyday life.

I'm truely neutral when it comes to conceal carry, I'm neither for or against it. But I hope people don't use that issue to prevent cops from having immediate access to firearms.

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...