New Zealand Freaks Over Possibility Of Armed Police

By Tom Knighton

New Zealand isn’t exactly a crime-ridden place. Of course, it’s a country with the population the size of Louisiana spread out among a landmass the size of Colorado but stretched out to have a shoreline similar to that of California and Oregon combined. Those all combine to really prevent it from becoming too much of a hotbed of criminal activity.

Recently, though, the country enacted radical gun control.

Now, police are looking to carry firearms all the time–something they haven’t been doing–and people are freaking out.

The new trial of Armed Response Teams (ARTs) in Counties Manukau, Waikato and Canterbury involves sending at least three armed police officers out in patrol vehicles to be constantly available to respond to crimes involving firearms. Currently, police do have armed offender squad officers, but they are dispatched from base to respond to serious firearms incidents rather than being continually present in the community.

The police commissioner has given two justifications for this trial of roving armed cops in cars: community safety and the safety of police officers themselves. The second reason is the real driver, but it will inevitably come at the expense of the first. Cops in cars with guns makes communities less …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms