Originally Posted by
framer
Poorly thought out idea smacking of immaturity and lack of experience.
If you are going to spend that amount of money on training and vetting , ( and increasing salaries commensurate with the responsibility I presume?) then you might as well just increase Fed Police numbers by 200 and have a rotating roster through the airports concerned.
If the ‘armed security guards’ are funded by private operations then you won’t achieve the goal of them being ‘properly trained’ as the financial imperative takes effect, ( I can read the Headlines now after someone gets shot for talking back at the x-ray machine and it isn’t de-escalated).
If they are federally funded they might as well be full time Police and utilise the economies of scale regarding training and vetting and firearm management etc. In addition they can benefit the nation in a multitude of other ways than just airport security.
Before you go off half-cocked (pun intended) at my post, you may want to actually READ and comprehend it.
I never said anything about airports, I was responding to a posted video about a shopping mall in South Australia.
Your response in any case is flippant and unsupportable by facts.
For example, we have Armourguard vehicles trundling around shopping centres and areas heavily trafficked by ordinary members of the public and the guards that drive them and collect money, YES, they are transporting MONEY, not protecting lives, are armed with either revolvers or automatic pistols. They are trained to a standard that obviously would require them to shoot an assailant to protect the money on the truck.
So, what you're saying by implication is that this is perfectly reasonable but ordinary members of the public who might be assaulted frequently (if the news segment is to be believed) are fair game and at the mercy of the perpetrator and a 'security guard' armed with a baton and zip ties but if there's MONEY involved, it demands a firearm?
To be consistent, you must also require Armourguard personnel having their firearms removed and resort to defending their cargo with sticks and stones?
At an Airport of course, AFP or PSOs of whatever grade are what should be deployed because it's under COMMONWEALTH jurisdiction.
We need to get past this irrational fear of firearms when properly used. Not too many years ago before the advent of bullet proof shutters, etc. in banks, the people who sat behind the tellers each were armed - two people in my family worked for different banks and each had a Browning .32 automatic pistol with a full clip under their desk(s), my local bank branch staff I know remember doing their firearms training before the systems were changed.
I only gave the example of the Police attending a small regional airport that night to illustrate that it makes a difference as per the old adage that you get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word but as I say, if you READ what I wrote, it was in response to the news segment.