Nothing says failed state quite like taxpayers hiring private security guards to patrol their suburbs and then those private security guards needing guns for their own protection.

But Victoria is in exactly that failed state situation as was reported by the Age this morning. I’m going to go through this article because it paints a bleak picture of the realities being faced by these private security staff who, in the words of private security guard Grant Burton, are bringing a baton to a knife fight. But this bleak situation is being faced not only by the security guards, but also by the victims of crime themselves. By definition, there will always be two people at the scene of any violent crime, the perpetrator and the victim. And the victims are disarmed by law in Australia.

But things are changing. Last week, I brought you this video of a brothel worker using pepper spray to protect herself from a violent, aggressive man with spectacular effect. The spray did exactly what it says on the tin, got him in the eyes, and instantly neutralized the attack. I said in my video last week that this security camera footage will have the Allen government tied up in knots over the question of whether to charge her with prohibited weapons offenses or whether to not. As of Monday, 20th of October, as I record this video, one full week after that attack, it appears that charges still have not been laid against the woman, exposing a [….] in the armor of Premier Jacinta Allan, because either she’s realized that laying charges would be explosive and political suicide, or perhaps because the police are actually refusing to lay charges because they can see that she did absolutely nothing wrong.

But keep that bit of background in mind as we read that according to the Age report from this morning, these private security guards now want guns. And the Age are reporting that they’ll have the guns before the end of this year. Which if that turns out to be true, then that’s great. But it only begs the question even more. If the police need guns and the private security need guns and self-defense is so obviously morally right and also remarkably effective, isn’t it time that we admitted that law-abiding citizens who are the victims of these increasingly violent crimes also need guns for our own self-defense?

I know it’s taboo in this country to advocate for the use of violence and even guns in self-defense.

Our current laws say on paper that you’re allowed to defend yourself, but in practice, the principle of proportionality means that you pretty much have to wait until you’ve already been stabbed or bashed before you’re then allowed to pick up a weapon. And heaven forbid you pick up a weapon which you placed inside your home or business for the purpose of self-defense. No, no, that won’t do. That would be premeditated and you will be charged.

To get away with defending yourself under the current rules and their current interpretations in the courts, you basically have to wait until the violent attackers are inside your home, have already hurt you with potentially deadly weapons and force, and then you’re allowed to pick up whatever random object happens to be within your reach, and use that object to fight back. That’s insane. And I mean that literally. There is no rational, sane, well-adjusted human being who could possibly conclude that the current laws with their current interpretations in our courts are in any way justified or moral or in keeping with the human right to defend yourself. And yet here we are.

We need guns. And if you’re wondering what that might look like in a practical way, stick around to the end of this video because I will detail what I would propose as a sensible way to reintroduce firearms back into Australian society for self-defense in a way that will lead to a drop in crime and not a spike in crime. But before we get to that and before we get to this Age article, my name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to keep up with the world as it changes around us and to make sense of the nonsense from our politicians and media.

Although I will say that this article from the Age is pretty solid with only a few omissions and bits of perspective that I’ll fill in as we go. I am 100% viewer supported. I don’t rely on advertisers or sponsors and that’s why I can say crazy things like law-abiding people should be allowed to defend our homes and businesses and cars with guns. There’s not a lot of sponsors who would let me say a thing like that and then play their ad. We should let people have guns. And by the way, have you thought about your skincare regime? It kind of just doesn’t work. That’s why I rely on you guys to help me to keep the Topher Project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos, then you’re going to love my books, DVDs, and merch, which you’ll find at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

Okay, let’s get stuck into this article from the Age. I won’t read the whole thing and I will stop along the way and fill in a few gaps. But honestly, this front page article from the Age on Monday the 20th, well, it’s a credit to the Age actually and that’s not something that I say about the mainstream media very often. The Melbourne suburbs, where security guards are forced to carry guns. Security guards patrolling housing estates in the booming outer west at night will arm soon as burglaries, carjackings, and machete attacks sore.

Private security guards patrolling housing estates in Melbourne’s outer west will start carrying guns before the end of the year as they face an unprecedented wave of violent home invasions, carjackings, and machete attacks.

Torched, stolen cars, high-speed chases, machete slashings, and bloodied streets have become all too frequent in the city’s booming western fringe, where police are often stretched thin, and youth gangs are going to war. The escalation to firearms is because of what’s coming our way and the threats against our safety against my team, said Grant Burton, the owner of a security company YPG Risk, whose night patrols are funded by housing estate residents. Pause. I can remember when I first heard about housing estates using private security guards in the USA. It was decades ago, and I thought, how dystopian. What kind of a backwards failed state would let crime get so out of hand that their police and courts are so powerless that people would feel the need to pay for private security? Well, fast forward just a few decades and here we are right here at home in Australia doing the same thing.

We have to ensure that our staff go home to their families. We’re all residents of the West. He said, “We have no option but to go from baton to firearms.” Earlier this month, youths driving a stolen car rammed one of the company’s vehicles in Mana Lakes, injuring the guard inside. Burton said staff regularly received death threats from gang members and increasingly confront offenders armed with machetes and knives. In the past, Burton has needed stitches after his face was slashed with knuckle dusters. He’s also had a bottle smashed over his head.

Now, I completely agree with what Grant is saying. Credit to him and his team for being willing to put themselves into harm’s way like that for the sake of their clients and their local community. But the injuries he’s receiving, well, they’re also being endured almost daily by victims of violent criminals all over Melbourne and indeed all over Australia. Kids are being murdered in the streets. People are getting slashed by the Yarra River. Hands are getting cut off. Heads are getting cut off. Cars are being stolen while there are kids strapped in the back seats and every stolen car creates a very real risk of innocent motorists being killed. To say nothing of the criminals and their mates who end up writing themselves off on a tree.

So, I’m not disagreeing with Grant to be clear. I’m saying yes, Grant. And you’re right. You and your team do need guns. I’m 100% with you. But let’s take that to its logical conclusion. Under current regulations, security guards are not allowed to carry controlled weapons such as capsicum spray or tasers, but they can apply for a gun license under strict conditions. Pause again. Can you imagine going out there to do that job with nothing but a baton and a body-worn camera? Credit to them. That takes some serious guts. And I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. But they’re willing to do it. And it’s an absolute disgrace that we disarm them by law and say, “Hey, yeah, you go out there and protect others, but we won’t let you protect yourself.” Absolute madness.

Every night, we’re attending no less than 15 phone calls across our cars, and they’re all genuine calls.

Burton said, “I’m not sure where the solution lies, but Victoria Police aren’t at fault. They can’t attend every call when you’ve got how many residents in the western corridor calling one police station in Werribee.” Pause again. I agree that the fault does not lie with the individual police officers, but it does lie with Victoria Police as an organization in combination with the courts and of course the government.

I’ve been a political observer for nearly 20 years now and began commentating publicly in 2009, 16 years ago. But I was already paying attention to the world back in 2001 when Christine Nixon became the Victoria Police Commissioner. And I would argue that she presided over the beginning of the decline of Victoria Police. The details of that decline are a whole other video in itself. But in my opinion, it was on her watch that Victoria Police began to be politicized. A process that reached its fullness during the Covid lockdowns where Victoria police allowed themselves to be used selectively by the Dan Andrews government, smashing protests against the lockdowns while bending the knee literally to Black Lives Matter protests held during the same pandemic period.

Now, if you don’t know that story, you can watch my multi-award-winning documentary about it completely for free. Just go to battlegroundmelbourne.com. There’s no sign up, no nothing. Just go to the website and you can watch it. Now, it’s no coincidence that Victoria Police morale is low, that they’re struggling to recruit and even more to retain. They’re understaffed, under-equipped, and facing increasing hostility even from the general public, who still mostly have a positive view of the police, but not nearly to the same degree as what used to be true before they allowed themselves to become Daniel Andrews’ brownshirts.

When you add to the decline of Victoria Police also the decline in our courts who are releasing and re-releasing violent criminals to offend again and again and then you add the laws that disarm us and make it nearly impossible for us to protect ourselves or our loved ones against those violent thugs even though we all know that the police and the courts are not going to protect us. When you put all that together, it amounts to a breach of public trust, a failure of duty of care. The police and the courts are no longer the reason why we are safe. They are the reason why we are not safe. They are the people that we fear if we’re ever unlucky enough to have to use violence to protect ourselves or our loved ones. We fear what the police will do. They’ll pursue us with as much or greater zeal as what they’ll pursue the people who attacked us.

Now, that’s not necessarily the fault of the individual officers, but I will say that the silence from the police union, police leadership, and indeed the silence from the rank and file members on this issue is disappointing, but ultimately this is a failure that has come from the top. Back to the article. It’s a revolving door of crime, Burton said. We’re seeing kids under 14, 15 breaking into cars and climbing people’s backyard fences and committing burglaries and home invasions and being in stolen cars every single day of the week. Police say many youth gangs are based in the West, particularly in Wyndham and Brimbank, although new gangs are also rising in the Southeast.

Now, I’ll say to be fair to Victoria Police, this rising crime problem, particularly the violence from young people, it’s not unique to Victoria. Other states are grappling with youth crime waves that are comparable. Now, this article in the Age, it continues with a bunch more stats and specifics, and it’s a rare bit of genuinely good journalism. So, I encourage you to grab a copy of Monday’s Age or go online to read it. But let me finish with this.

I am advocating for putting guns back into the hands of law-abiding Australians, specifically for the purpose of self-defense, home defense, business defense, car defense.

Now, you might agree or you might disagree. Let me know in the comments either way. But the question of how this should be done is a fair question whether you agree or not. So, let me describe to you how I would go about it if I had the power to make these reforms. It is important to ensure that noncriminal get their hands on self-defense weapons first and foremost. I mean, criminals are already armed. We know that. But we don’t want to make it even easier for them to upgrade any further.

There is a limited supply of firearms at any given moment in time. So a total blanket deregulation of all guns for everybody would create some problems of its own. So I propose a staged process. Firstly, remove all restrictions on pepper spray, all restrictions on tasers, remove all restrictions on the use of weapons for self-defense inside your own home, baseball bats, cricket bats, camping equipment, including machetes. Guns. If you are already a licensed gun owner, let’s legalize all self-defense options. And yes, I’m well aware that that will require changes to the storage requirements for legally owned firearms so that legal gun owners can keep a gun in a location and a condition that will make it useful to the homeowner if they hear a bump in the night. At the moment, they’re all locked away and it would take far too long to go and get them.

We also need to change the transport laws for guns so that people can bring a shotgun with them to work and keep that shotgun handy at work and then take that home with them again at the end of the day. Now, I’m not suggesting that every staff member at a Bunnings is going to be walking around with a shotgun slung over their shoulder, although that would be pretty cool. But for example, if you’re a corner store owner with tobacco products up on your shelf or you’re a jeweler, or you’re any one of a bunch of other small to medium business owners, yeah, you might decide that you want to have something handy at all times, and that should absolutely be your right.

So, legalize pepper spray, legalize self-defense with castle law for the home, and reform self-defense laws generally, the ones that apply to business and cars and anytime, anywhere.

And also change the storage and transport laws for existing legal gun owners. That’s step one. It can be done very quickly. It’s just some paperwork and already that will begin to make a big difference. But step two, anyone who is already licensed to carry a gun in their job, this would include law enforcement, but also some private security, but also military, including reserves. Anyone who’s already carrying a gun as any part of their job in any capacity should be immediately allowed to own a shotgun for self-defense at home. And I start with shotguns deliberately. They’re hard to conceal. They’re not a lot of use to criminals, but they are very effective for home or business defense. Without a major risk of injuring innocent bystanders because shotguns, by their nature, with the right load, they don’t do much damage at a distance. They’re very effective at close range. And when it comes to home defense or business defense, that’s a characteristic that you want.

So already that would mean that there’s a few tens of thousands of homes, maybe even hundreds of thousands of homes around Australia that could be protected with guns. Between existing licensed gun owners, plus this new group of people who have guns in their work and are now allowed to have them at home, well, the door to anyone’s home could be a home where one of these people live. So, we’re going to put doubt into the minds of these existing criminals as to whether they really want to keep kicking people’s doors in at night.

But we don’t stop there. Give that a month or three for gun supplies to meet that demand for shotguns and for people to begin to get used to this idea. Maybe for some good news to come out that perhaps a few home invasions have been stopped with a shotgun to the face. And then we open it up further to anyone who’s been an adult citizen in Australia for at least 10 years with no criminal record. Now, follow me on this one. 10 years in Australia as an adult citizen. This means that they’re at least 28 years of age or older for people who came to Australia or got their citizenship later in life. And by and large, if someone’s going to be a serious criminal or have massive mental health issues, we already know about it by the time they’re 28. So let these people who have no criminal record, no mental health issues, have been in Australia as a citizen for at least 10 years as an adult let them have a shotgun for home defense because by and large these are not the people committing the crimes. These are the people who are the victims of violent crimes.

Then you give it 12 months. Now just about any home could be protected with a shotgun. We let a few would-be home invaders get shot in the face and the homeowners get a pat on the back instead of cuffs on the wrist. And we watch as our violent crime wave begins to subside. Now, I would say that after 12 months, things should be relaxed even further, including handguns for concealed carry or open carry for all adult citizens, dropping that 10-year requirement because at this point, the deterrent will be well and truly in place. But if you restrict younger adults up to 28 years of age and they can’t do it, then they become the targets, the homes of people in their early 20s become the safe target for criminals. And we don’t want that to happen either.

So, by this point, we have open or concealed carry. We have people being able to use guns in self-defense in their home, in their car, in their business, in and to transport those guns in between. Now, if you’re still watching at this point, then you’re probably at least open to the idea, but a lot of people will have rage quit this video by now. Do you want to live in a country where people are just walking around with guns? Yes. Yes, I do want to live there.

I can remember it happening from time to time when I was very young in the 1980s. It was rare, but not all that alarming to see someone walking around with a rifle in a case or on occasion just openly slung on their shoulder. You’d see them take it from their car to the house or back again. No one felt the need to freak out about someone’s got a gun the way that we do now. Yes, I absolutely want to live in a country where vulnerable people, including vulnerable women, can equip themselves with whatever suits them best for their own self-defense. I’m not saying they have to carry a gun. Maybe that doesn’t feel right for them. But pepper spray or a taser or a baseball bat, whatever it is that they believe is in their best interest.

But the alternative is to live what? In what we have now, a country where people are having machete fights inside shopping centers, completely immune to any real world consequences. People just have to run away and close the shutters on their shops and hope for the best. We live in a country where home invasions and carjackings are a nightly occurrence and the violent criminals are the ones who are kept safe by our laws because their victims are disarmed by law.

Final point, some bleeding hearts will say, “Do you want these kids to get shot in the face? They might die.”

To which I ask, do you want them killing themselves and others in a head-on collision as they go joyriding in their stolen car? Because that’s where we’re at right now. We’ve tried the whole disarm yourself and depend on the police for your protection thing. It’s not working. The police can’t keep up. The private security guards are resorting to guns, and the people who protect themselves effectively are at risk of prosecution from our government for the crime of succeeding where the state has so obviously failed.

We need guns in the hands of as many law-abiding people as possible. Call me what you want, I don’t care. I just want to see innocent people no longer getting hurt and violent offenders getting some consequences that they need so they stop their life of crime before they kill themselves or someone else. This isn’t a choice between a gun-filled dystopia and a peaceful gun-free paradise. This is a choice between the violence-filled gun-free dystopia that we have right now and a future where there’s still violence. Sadly, we’re never going to get rid of that completely, but where the victims can fight back and the offenders have to think twice.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and sometimes it falls to me to say the unsayable thing. Things like we need guns in Australia. I am 100% viewer supported. So, please help me to keep the Topher project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos and my no-nonsense style, then you’ll love my books about government, power, human rights, and civil disobedience. There’s my first book called Good People Break Bad Laws. It’s about the importance and function of civil disobedience in the modern age. Then there’s my second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws. This is all about the theology of civil disobedience. Plus, there’s the DVD of my documentary, Battleground Melbourne, which you can watch for free at battlegroundmelbourne.com. But if you want a copy for yourself, then you can also get the DVD. And you can get my t-shirts and hoodies and a range of different designs, all available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. And everything you buy will help me to keep the Topher project going.

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