I believe that this lovely family man was almost as well-RESPECTed as the more famous Michael Corleone and, like Mr Corleone, active in the retail pharmaceuticals sector. Like many prominent businessmen he carried a weapon for his own protection except at children’s parties. Whether his gun was licensed or not is unclear. I think we should be told. I doubt we will be. I mean, I have no doubt we will be. Told.
Perhaps the official IPCC enquiry will tell us to believe that on the day in question this loving father of four, widely recognised as a jokester, unwittingly gave a nervous officer reason to believe he was about to fire it at him, possibly by pointing it at him in a marked manner but only for a joke. Or perhaps, as I suspect, he was just scratching his head with it. After all, there are lots of midges about at this time of year and I think we can all agree that they are a damned nuisance.
In short, I fully expect that we shall learn that any fear on the part of the officer who fired will prove to have been baseless and that we shall be told that this lovely, innocent man died as a result of ineptitude on the part of trigger-happy, institutionally racist police.
Well prodicus, it was a pistol he is alleged to have been holding therefore by definition it cannot have been legitimately held - one of the most scurrilous laws in that large repository of illiberal crap ensures the possession of such weapons only by criminals with intent to use them to further their nefarious activities.
ReplyDeleteWhether the copper was justified in actually shooting him though is hard to say and I doubt will ever be properly established - the police record in such casess is very far from unblemished.
My own view on this is that the police are in general not fit to be issued with weapons, and that society would be much safer if middle class householders were allowed to hold them.
There is to my knowledge no evidence that the ban on licencing pistols to the law-abiding has had any discernible effect on murder rates.