I think that the are two reasons why arming Police as a response to rising gun violence is a really bad idea.

The first is that the majority of Police outside the Armed Offenders Squads and anti terrorist teams don’t have much gun training. You want a Police Officer to be highly trained before they are drawing weapons on members of the public.

Poorly trained cops plus guns = bad social policy.

The second reason I think arming Police as a response to rising gun violence is a bad idea is because it misses the drivers of that gun violence and if you don’t understand why it’s happening the solution might exacerbate the problem not fix it.

We are seeing a unique event in the NZ criminal underworld. Never before has an influx of a far more violent gang dynamic impacted the domestic gangs the way the forced renditions of 501s from Australia has.

Not all 501s are criminals and we urgently need to provide huge resources and wrap around services for these men who desperately need help building a life in a country they barely know.

However, a large percentage of the 501s ARE heavy, heavy criminals from the Australian underworld and they have formed syndicates to take over the local gangs.

That’s the violence we are seeing, it’s a market take over by Australian criminals prepared to use a level of violence way beyond the domestic gangs ever have.

Kiwis have been lulled into a false narrative spun by National and ACT that our gangs are the worst in the world when really they are very tame compared to the Australian professional class of violent organized crime.

What makes the 501s especially dangerous is their connections to South American Cartels who are another level of Uber violence. They get a cheaper & purer meth which buys them greater market share.

Arming Police when the driver of the gun violence is a market take over by a far more violent and invasive species of criminal isn’t a solution.

The solution is a secret sit down between the Police Intelligence Unit and all the domestic gangs to take out the 501s with the gangs giving the Police all the evidence they need for a mass syndicate take down.

Such a level of co-operation isn’t as impossible as it sounds, this Government managed to get all the domestic gangs to film a message to get all gang members vaccinated, those lines of communication could easily be used again.

The 501s and their South American Cartel links are a dangerously destabilizing influence in NZ. Working with the domestic gangs to set up the 501s and take down the new royalty of organized crime in NZ would require planning and immense strategy but would amputate a new class of dangerous criminal before they take root.

THAT would stop rising gun crime because you’d remove the violence escalator that is the 501s.

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