Armed Robbery in progress at a Queensland pub. An attending policeman is shot in the face with a shotgun.
This is the sort of crime for which ropes were invented.
Three suspects are banged up the next day. It is not known how many more were involved.
The three, if they are guilty, won't receive anything like what they deserve; for Madame Hemp no longer reigns supreme in today's watered down legal system. (Having experience with the Qld judiciary, and with Qld's Crown Law, Mine Host is no longer comfortable with the term "justice").
Mine Host has always been very aware of just how many Pubs in the state are knocked off at closing time. In his first year in the industry it was 92 (for the year before). From the moment he gleaned this statistic Mine Host has had little sympathy for the bleatings of the Bank Employees' union, & their input. For they are not the ones at risk. It the working stiffs in pubs & service stations who have to face armed robbers.
And we are the people the government has disarmed. Robbers have acute risk analysis skills. If they stand a chance of being shot dead on a job, they cry off.
Pre-1996 gun laws, there was a chance that a pub had a shotgun under the counter. There was a stronger chance that some of the customers had a rifle in their Toyota. (Indeed, one of the staff was once saved by exactly that).
Now that Australia has universal strict gun laws, under which legal ownership of a gun isn't easy, and any publican caught with a firearm would be risking his licence to operate. Robbers know this. Not being restricted by the law, they are free to own all the firearms they wish.
Armed robberies at pubs are now a regular feature in the news.
The world is nowhere near as safe, neither for pub staff, nor those who come to their rescue. And someone has died because of it.
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