When you outsource your security to the government

You get government security.

I left the pistol out of the image so as not to get any Aussie government fee-fees in an uproar.

I’m going to break my own 72-Hour Rule¹ on Murder/Terrorism incidents because something about the Bondi Beach incident has me seeing red.

Initial reports are that the terrorists fired at the beachgoers for “20 minutes”, until the riot squad showed up.

Now, having been through more than my fair share of critical incidents, the “20 minutes” doesn’t concern me much. Nobody did a time-check or started a stopwatch when the bangs started, and the endorphins and hormone release that accompanies Critical Incident Stress does really funny things to your sense of time. Ten minutes under fire can feel like an hour; and an hour under fire can seem like five minutes, so I wasn’t real concerned.

Then video came out. Video that started sometime after the shooting began, and ended before the shooting stopped … and lasted for ten minutes.

That … concerned me.

So, I started looking. Here is the closest police station:

That looks like a couple of blocks to me. 500 metres — more or less — as the crow flies. A distance that my 58-year-old, moderately crippled arse² can cover in about four minutes while carrying a 9mm pistol.

I was starting to get a bit irked — but, honestly, given the time for someone to call the emergency number, dispatch to separate the detail grain from the panic chaff, and transit time to get officers onto the scene … ok. Not good, but understandable.

Only it got worse: Initial reports are that there were four (4) police officers actually at the beach when the shooting started.

“Self,” I said to my self, as the twitching started, “The Aussies are probably following the example of the Brits, and their officers don’t routinely carry guns.”

Apparently that was an incorrect assumption.

Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that two terrorists rampaged with a five-round bolt-action Beretta BRX1, and a tube-fed shotgun for AT LEAST ten minutes — on bloody video — while four (4) armed Australian police officers … didn’t stop them.

Four armed officers on-scene while two bastards armed with weapons that don’t reload quickly played Whack-A-Mole … and a citizen had to be the one to rush them.

Even if the officers were not armed, they still have a duty. If an unarmed citizen can rush the threats … what’s their excuse?

If I’ve got a fact wrong, I’d love for someone to provide information that makes those officers look better, because I would not be able to live with myself if I had been one of them using the data I currently have.³

I’m serious — I’m retired and I’m ashamed of what I’m seeing.

“Give up your guns, the government will protect you, and you’ll be safer.”

Pfagh.

If the government is going to take the right of self-protection away from the citizens, then it is incumbent on that government to actually, you know, provide protection. If the government can’t provide that protection, then get out of the citizen’s way.

This is what happens when you out-source your personal security to the government.

And — of course — the Aussie government is promising even more restrictive gun laws. Of bloody course.⁴

Ian

1. Nobody gets the facts right for the first 48-72 hours after a terror attack or mass murder, so prevent the spread of gossip and rumour by not commenting for 72 hours.

2. 25-year-old Patrol Deputy Ian could cover 500 metres in about one minute, forty-five seconds.

3. Before you start “Mew mew mew-ing” at me, I have a decades long record of taking Texas peace officers — and other law enforcement — to task for failing their duty. If I can publicly suggest that Uvalde PD should “Do the honourable thing” for cowardice, then the Aussies can take their ass-chewing.

4. “We did the citizens good and hard, the obvious solution is to do them harder!”