Good reason for killing another person? Surely not.

In Ireland, the Garda Síochána, our police force, was founded by people who had spent the previous five years shooting; they very deliberately made it an unarmed force: "The Garda Síochána will succeed, not by force of arms or numbers, but by their moral authority as servants of the people." (Commissioner Michael Staines (1885-1955), First Commissioner of An Garda Síochána)

This record was maintained through years including those when very violent revolutionaries were captured and brought to justice by those unarmed gardaí.

Currently, when the government, like other EU governments, is too stupid to follow the example of Portugal's targeted and careful decriminalisation of all drugs, we're in the middle of a gang war in Dublin; as a result, without consultation of the people, many of the gardaí are now armed. It has done nothing to stop the murders, and has distanced the police from the people.