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It is high time we stop feeling sorry for the perpetrators of crime. In almost every instance the victim of crime fares far worse than the perpetrator when it comes to public opinion. In court it is considered that the victim is being a trouble maker by insisting on justice. What justice is there to a victim of assault who has been disfigured by someone wielding a knife for example, only to go through the ordeal of court proceedings and see the perpetrator receive what seems to be a pat on the back for keeping the court system alive?

Consider this situation. If someone is wielding a knife (perpetrator) and you (the victim) are unarmed but have asked very nicely for that person to be a good fellow and put the knife down ,do you really think that that person is actually going to comply with your request? Sure he'll put the knife down but not before you (the victim) have been badly slashed . But wouldn't you know it? The perpetrator was partially deaf, came from a broken home and thought you were attacking him. It almost as if you brought it upon yourself to be slashed across your face and arms in your attempt to disarm the person. You shouldn't have interfered.

Now lets assume you are a police officer in a similar situation only this time you have drawn your gun and rather than ask nicely for the person to put the gun down ,you have actually shouted the order . The person does not comply and comes at you with the knife. If I was the police officer facing imminent slashing by some cretin who may or may not be partially deaf I would use my revolver every time without even thinking about whether the cretin came from a broken home.

The minority groups would no doubt insist that the police officer ,if he had to use his gun, should have aimed to hit the person in the leg or arm if that person came charging at the police officer while wielding a knife. I also have no doubt that the ranks of the minority would be thinned considerably from knife wounds ,if not death ,while trying to aim their gun at some cretin charging at them with a knife. Any person who sets out to disobey a clear cut order from a police officer to drop his weapon in my opinion deserves everything he gets. In the split second to make a decision between life and death , the police officer has every right to shoot to kill.There is no time to be selective.

So if the police officer made a decision to arrest the person by use of a taser rather than draw his gun would not that be a better solution than the distinct possibly of killing a person? Would not the use of a tazer avoid the terrible trauma that the police officer goes through if a death occurs, not to mention the family of the criminal? Surely the minority groups would support the use of tazers where appropriate in preference to fire arms?

It should not matter if the person is armed or unarmed if they set out to disobey a police order. Use of a gun or the tazer should be a matter for the police officer's judgment and not a violation of any law. Given a choice of being shot or being tazered where circumstances dictated their use I would have no doubt what choice the criminal would make regardless of whether or not it violated any law.

Learn more about this author, Barry Williams.
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