Voters say yes to terror Australis - National - smh.com.au
The link above is about an AC Nielson poll in which 60% of the respondents apparently were against the police being given "shoot to kill" authority when pursuing terrorist suspects.
As I detailed at length a few days ago, the legal question about currrent police authority to use lethal force in an arrest is complicated. It relies on both legislation (that varies slightly from State to State) as well as common law. There is no way possible that this poll could have given the respondents sufficient background information for them to make a meaningful response. Even the use of "shoot to kill" in the first place (if indeed that is the phrase used; this story does not make it clear) was really so prejudicial as to make the poll results useless.
It is a "gut reaction" poll, but we shouldn't make law on that basis.
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