Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

MEMO to gun-toting lawbreakers: We expect the police to shoot you.

Do not expect them to wait for you to start shooting at us or them first, before they nail you.

If you are desperate enough/drug crazed/just plain stupid – and get into a police stand-off with a firearm – you will most likely be shot. We do not care if you die with a surprised look on your face, thinking 'that's not fair.”

We pay the police to do this. They aren't there for fun. They are there, with guns when necessary, to protect us from those who think they can threaten the lives of the generally law abiding public.

We REQUIRE the police to shoot those who threaten our safety – whether that be with a gun, knife, (or even a fake gun) or any other weapon or threat.

Once dead, your family may bleat all they like. It does not change the fact that you CHOSE to run with a firearm and they should take a long hard look at the upbringing and influences that led you to the point of opting to arm yourself against the police force and become a menace to society.

Also remember: It's not like the movies.

Odds are...
The odds of gun-toting lawbreakers winning against the considerably greater and better organised firepower of the police are not great. Statistically, the law eventually wins every time.

The police will shoot you sooner or later. We hope it is sooner, because the longer you rampage around with a gun, the more chance of someone innocent, or a police officer protecting the innocent, will be killed.

Occasionally, due to ridiculous PC pressure, a few innocents – including police in the line of duty – are injured or die, while society stupidly allows the perpetrator some sort of benefit-of-doubt leeway; waiting to see if he will use a firearm or weapon, before he is taken out.

In the case of the police pre-empting such a tragedy, clear thinking people applaud the quick and decisive action. However due to PC earbashing, most are too scared to admit it.

But the vast majority of the public would rather the risk was taken out early than waiting to see how great that risk can aspire to.

When I was a kid, using a bean slicer, we used to see how far down the chute we could put our fingers before the blades hit. It was a lesson quickly learnt. The bean slicer won every time.

What is the point of waiting to see when a gunman will shoot?

Anyone running with a gun loses their rights the moment they make that decision. They do not have the right to any leeway.

Further, many will applaud the savings that result from a gunslinger being terminated on the spot. No expensive public-funded rehabilitation, no costly trials, no public-funded free lawyer, no need for room taken up in a prison cell at around $100,000 a year – just to be eventually released and the whole life-threatening (to innocent taxpayers) and expensive process started over again.

Looking ahead
In other news this week, the Regional Council among others, working on draft ten year plans. Which got me wondering, considering the government's stated intention to re-organise local government, what is the point?

We know Councils are required by law to produce the document, but really, isn't this a waste of time and resources?

There wouldn't seem to a lot of point in planning anything as far out as ten years when the organisations likely won't be in existence in their current forms.

It reminds us of a cartoon doing the rounds in the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq, when some joker put out an Iraqi Calendar that ended on the day of the US-imposed deadline for Iraq to pull into line.

What the council really needs is something like the Mayan Calendar, which mysteriously ends on Friday December 2012. Let's see a draft 2.5 year plan.

Who knows, it might save 75 per cent of the cost.

Headline of the Week

Arriving in the mail this week, an article headed: 'New Zealand prepares for the Looney Tunes Arrival.” Well guess what... they're already here! Anyone following politics in this country knows this.
Sorry to break the news to the good folk organising the Easter Show in Auckland, but Bugs Bunny and friends have a hard act to follow.

The all new Sudoku

Alert readers this week will notice that we have a new feature in the Sun: a Sudoku. I have no idea what it's for, but suspect it's some form of small Japanese transport and we suggest for safety's sake, you wear a helmet while riding it. It's in the entertainment department, around page 45. Give us your feedback!

Parting thought

Parting thought, thanks to Brian B. of Pyes Pa: Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC.

Important notice:

Daylight saving ends Sunday morning. Put your clocks back an hour and remind that damned rooster.