Melbourne Shooting - Started in a King Street Bar
MELBOURNE, Australia: 11.10 AM AEST– Not typical for Melbourne. A gunman shot three people, killing one and wounding two in Melbourne’s legal & financial hub, in morning peak hour at 8.15 am approx.
LINKS TO DESCRIPTION OF THE EVENT AT BOTTOM OF POST.
Melbourne does not have a wide variety of hand guns in the hands of random criminals, and shootings are rare.
According to The Age newspaper, the shooter apparently originated from a King Street bar, a sleazy and moderately dangerous night-club strip of strippers and bars that all but the desperate (and lost) generally avoid. A popular choice for out-of-towners, the area is not really regarded as safe, rather like Kings Cross in Sydney. It’s is only 2 blocks from the shooting sight.
Bar fights in King Street are nothing new but, the use of handguns in Melbourne is new. We do not have a gun culture in Australia, and it appears that many men tried to stop the attack happening either at the bar or at the shooting. One man was shot and is dead at the scene, the woman and another man are suffering gunshot wounds.
There will be a lot written about this in coming days, but one of the keys to safe cities and communities is knowing that random strangers don’t have guns.
Easily concealed handguns are a threat to Melbourne’s safety, because they are a ‘network good’ - once a few people have a gun, others (the network)get weapons to defend themselves.
The ‘network good’ problem (an economic term, really) is how knives became so common in Melbourne, as teenage boys started carrying knives as defense against other boys, or to be seen to protect their girlfriends/friends.
What happened; Allgedly after a bar confrontation, the shooter, about 6ft tall, casual clothes, later grabbed a woman by the hair out of a taxi two blocks away in the business district. Two men apparently defended her, according to some sources. One man was shot and died on the pavement later. The woman and one man are in hospital with gunshot wounds.
What is unusual is that the shooting happened in the Monday morning rush right out front of a couple of law firms and several business cafes. I walk past the area almost daily, as our office is less than a block away.
It was less than 200 feet from our office, this does not happen in Melbourne, but the fact it started in the King Street bar district, is less unusual.
Going forward, the police and courts have an oppportunity to prevent a gun culture arising as a network in melbourne, by a)catching the shooter and b) cracking down on all handgun related violence, and imposing maximum penalties.
Melbourne is a peaceful city, and a far safer place than Sydney. Melbourne has late-night stabbings and a pill-based drug epidemic, and most sane people stay out of King Street nightclubs. Hopefully this mostly safe city will remain that way in it’s heart.
You can read all about the latest news on the ground at:
The story from The Age (look also in the Sidebar)
Christopher-in-Melbourne-dragged-into-the-criminal-world
Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.
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