Lindt Café - Redux

The Lindt Café "incident" is well behind us. The place has re-opened, and only three people died - the manager, a customer, and the fanatical muslim wack-job that started it all.

The trouble is, two of those deaths were completely unnecessary, and all three can probably be laid directly at the feet of the police.

The muslim wack-job deserved to die, and apparently the police team did the appropriate thing there; but the manager was killed when he tried to do the job that the police somehow hadn't got around to yet, and there is not much doubt that the customer was killed by police gun-fire during the farcical comedy of incompetence that they called a "dynamic entry". You'd guess that somebody that "died of a heart attack on the way to hospital" had to have first had some problem needing treatment in a hospital, wouldn't you?

Funny thing is, if there had been a fire in the kitchen, it would have been handled with the fire extinguisher in the corner; if a barista had been scalded, the first-aid kit in the office would have been raided for burn dressings; if a customer had spilled a coffee, the mop from the cleaner's cupboard would have been pressed into service; but some devout religious fanatic starts yelling "Aloha Snackbar" and waving a shotgun, and there is neither an appropriate tool available, nor the will, to solve the problem.

Why is that?

Well, mostly it is due to actions of the police over years, and former Prime Minister John "Jackboot" Howard most recently.

You see, if there had been something available to snuff out the problem before it got really started - say a baseball bat under the counter, or (quelle horreur!!!) a firearm, then the muslim wack-job would have been down and out (or preferably, cooling to room temperature) before he got to his second sentence.

Only problem is, the police would then have charged the life-saver with assault or even murder, and if they had found the tool BEFORE the incident, then the charge would likely have been something like "lying in wait while armed" or "unlawful possession of a weapon". This has been going on for decades - the police have an ingrained antipathy to self-defence, and the possession of ANYTHING that could be used for self-defence.

Little Johnny Jackboot only made it worse with his hysterical response to the Port Arthur incident - pressing for heavy restrictions on firearms ownership by everybody that didn't do it, demonising law-abiding Australians, and blackmailing the states into implementing the laws that he wanted (or, if the stories are true, that his wife wanted).

So now we have a population that is conditioned not to fight back against the bad guys, and that doesn't have access to the most appropriate tools for the task.

I have heard all the bleating that the muslim wack-job shouldn't have had access to a gun, and how tighter restrictions would have prevented the tragedy, but that is simply untrue, and to me it seems that there should have been at least one more gun at that café - in the hands of a good guy.