“There’s a street in Melbourne’s outer south-eastern suburbs where weapons have become a way of life,” 9news.com.au reports. And that’s because . . .
As little as five years ago, the area was considered rural, but now, it’s been swallowed up by suburbia.
A slow but steady tsunami of urban sprawl is wiping out the hobby farms and paddocks, and replacing them with housing developments, traffic lights, a shopping centre, and a McDonald’s.
With the population explosion has come the crime, and for the first time, locals who’ve lived here their whole lives are dealing with home invasions and theft.
So, residents have formed a citizen militia. But as these law-abiding residents can’t own a firearm for self-defense — or defense of their community — they’ve turned to legal weapons . . .
“Baseball bats, nail guns, compressed air homemade machine guns that shoot paintball pallets. On this stretch of road, people are petrified.” . . .
Joe and his neighbours patrol the streets at night, on the look-out for burglars and suspicious activity.
They call themselves the “No Fear” gang.
“Yeah, I patrol with my bow and arrows. I’ve got a 70 pound (31kg) compound bow with more than a dozen arrows with various types of tips, and blades that pop out of them to make as much damage and fatal wounding as they can,” Joe said.
He’s been stockpiling weapons in recent months and is proud of his terrifying arsenal.
“I got my knuckle dusters, various steel pipes. I’ve got a pen gun, hollow tip bullets that have been hollowed out a little bit with mercury in them.
“That way if you only nick your target, you know they’re going to die five days later in an excruciating death.”
Why do I get the feeling that a Oz’s Current Affair program chose to highlight “Joe” due to the fact that he’s the most “extreme member” of the citizen militia? Perhaps for the same reason abc9news.com.au put the problem at the end of the article instead of the front (corrected here).
This story’s “shock” value can be traced to the fact that Australia’s mainstream media views armed self-defense — whether it’s with a gun or a crossbow — as madness. Madness I tell you! Madness!
There’s only one street in this suburb where the road is mostly still dirt, and that’s where we find a kind-of motley militia, disturbingly comfortable with taking the law into their own hands, even if it means putting innocent lives at risk.
I guess the fact that innocent lives are already at risk doesn’t figure. Not when you live in a disarmed society.