Driven the Wahgi for 37 yrs and never felt the need to be armed?
What utter rubbish!
I have driven between Kundiawa and Lae maybe 5 times...between Kundiawa and Hagen maybe 10 times...back and forth between Kundiawa and Minj golf club numerous times.
On one occasion my then wife and I were stopped at a one lane bridge just west of Kianantu by shotgun armed rascals with balaclavas over their heads...do you really think they would not have raped Joanne had I not been armed and fired at them while reversing away? Would either of us have survived? Very probably NOT!!!
On another occasion while driving back from Hagen we were presented with the same scenario but without the road being actually blocked...I didn't stop...fired a few rounds randomly forward of the car...and one not so randomly at the rascal drawing a bead on me from the right side.
On both occassions they were firing at me first.
If someone had been armed at the Dero the whole incident would likely have been over before anyone of the 16 patrons had been axed...the security guard being the exception.
I truly wish I had ignored Joanne that night...how no-one was actually killed is amazing...if you had been there and watched John Moet going down under a rain of axe blows to his upper body perhaps you might have a different view...if you'd seen Taildragger axed with extreme brutality, when he was following the screamed instructions to get on the ground.
When you are lying on the ground next to your wife who is lying on top of your 2 yr old to shield her and a raskol holds a homemade (note Peter, homemade) shotgun to your head and threatens to blow it off and then rape your wife...if I had been armed that night I would have had zero compunction...all the good people were lying on the ground...many bleeding from grievous wounds...all the baddies were standing up backlit by the clubhouse lighting, running around axing people....if I had been armed and shot the first raskol that ran past the rest would likely have run out as fast as they ran in. Ask Peter Gerdes about being face to face with a raskol armed with a home made shot gun that night....at a range of less than a foot the raskol pulled the trigger while aiming at his face...and the gun missfired...pure luck...I doubt Peter ever really got over that!
And please note also that this occurred early in the evening...when the bar was full and the till relatively empty...it was not done for pure financial gain, it was done to hurt/kill people.
Taildraggers memories of what started the shooting at the Cathay Club are somewhat at odds with the version I heard from both witnesses and the actual shooters (there were two) the rascals had started getting very nasty with some of the women folk, including the very pregnant wife of one shooter, before they started shooting.
I have also been in a situation where I was armed and held at gunpoint (Rabaul Yacht Club) but it never got to the point where using the gun was warranted...and no they didn't take it off me and NO-ONE, before or after, knew I was armed....if it had got nasty though...
On one or two other occassions, like the incident above at the Chinese Restaurant at Boroko being armed stopped me being robbed or hurt/killed...note I didn't need to kill to protect myself...a warning shot fired close over their heads will set 99% of raskols running for their lives.
Would the lady helicopter pilot (Heather) in Lae have been so brutally raped and murdered if she was armed?
A close female friend drove off a rapist in Goroka Teachers College compound one night when the wantok (the Haus Meri) of the attacker left the escape hatch in the floor unlocked for him...she had one of those rotary flare guns and fired one into his face after being stabbed numerous times with a screw driver...it wasn't until some time after when she went to a doctor she realised that she had in fact been raped, infected with syphilis and vaginally damaged...she had blocked it out...the offender was a security guard who turned up to work a week or so later with a badly burned face...when confronted by the police his wantoks made it abundantly clear what would happen to all the resident females if the attacker was arrested....he was not arrested...I believe he was 'taken care of' some time later!
I can think of two other friends of mine who very probably would NOT have been shot (non fatally by pure luck) had they been armed...and another...a national pilot who was murdered in front of his wife and children in broad daylight...yes he was shot by a 17yr old using a probably stolen firearm...but perhaps it was one of the 10s of thousands of handguns left in PNG after the war...or one of the thousands sold from police and CIS/Army armouries by corrupt members of the army, police etc.
Yes there have been murders, shootings and armed robberies where guns stolen from expats were used...a miniscule number compared to those provided by corrupt individuals in the very govt departments tasked with the protection of the public.
When the police are demonstably incapable of protecting citizens and the criminals are demonstably prepared to use deadly force as a first option what possible option do people have but to arm themselves?
Pete you have always been one to look at PNG through rose tinted glasses, we probably all do to some extent...you have always been an appologist. Well ok...I loved my time there too...but bad **** happened and continues to happen I am sure.
One of those know it all, play the old time expat to the hilt (he wouldn't have been 30) bank johnies once had a go at me...reckoned my close calls with raskols were 'my fault' and that he never got into trouble because he was 'street savvy'!!! Shtitfaced on a bar stool at the Aviat Club...where he spent every waking moment when not at work.
I guess family bbq night at the Dero, driving on the Highlands Highway, having a few post boating beers at the Rabaul Yacht Club on a sunday evening count as activities that in his opinion were high risk.
You also need to remember that your first 20+ yrs in PNG were in a virtually crime free era.
I would be hard pressed to pull up 3 names of any of my contemporaries who were not exposed to violent crime in their time in PNG...if they spent more than 12 mths there...a handfull will carry the physical scars, if not mental ones, to their graves. In 13+ yrs I was shot at half a dozen times at least, had guns pointed at me that many times again and was robbed at gun point twice....to suggest not carrying a handgun in PNG is disengenuous...I just find it very difficult to believe your brother didn't ever carry one.
Sorry to highjack a fun thread with such a serious topic...but the above was just as much a feature of life in PNG as the fun times and drunken sillyness...and what amazes me more and more as the yrs since I departed roll on is the fact that it didn't bother me more at the time. That we laughed like drains after the Rabaul yachty incident...at Rocket Marsland when he came out of the dunnies drunk as a lord as we were frog marched past hands held high by balaclava wearing, shotgun toting raskols..."Bit farking hot for balaclavas innit?" I **** you not...that's what he said...but quickly fell into line hands held high when the shotgun was held to his face..."well ok you can wear a balaclava"
Laugh? we nearly wet ourselves...after it was over and no-one was hurt...we also drank free the rest of the evening!
Edit: Tinpis that rather lovely graphic is what is causing the page to be so wide...can ya reduce it or just post a link? Tenk yu tru Masta.