Sir, The law and order debate in the general election seems to have bypassed the question of whether or not the Garda should be armed. I believe that it should. It is ridiculous that gardai should be made to lie down when a criminal so requests to facilitate a crime. Also, one can only wonder what some gardai feel (intense fear?) when called to a bank robbery when the criminals are definitely going to be armed and they are not.
Gardai are paid to do a job but not equipped to do it properly. Would the victims of Brendan O'Donnell still be alive if the two gardai who initially discovered him were not forced to back off at his gunpoint?
It is a fallacy to say that arming gardai would start a spiral of fire-arm violence as all the serious criminals seem to have guns anyway. Most of the juvenile criminals simply have no respect for the forces of law and order. This is often based on their perception of what those forces can do to them. Arming gardai could conceivably promote a healthy fear/respect for them that no doubt they and the law-abiding public would appreciate. - Yours, etc.,
Sundbyberg,
Stockholm,
Sweden.