Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
A bizarre police killing in a sparsely populated part of Queensland, about 170 miles northwest of Brisbane, Australia, happened on Monday, December 12. The accused police killers had all worked for the Queensland Department of Education. Two were brothers, Nathaniel and Gareth. Gareth was married to Stacy, who had been married to Nathaniel. Both Nathaniel and Stacy were school principals at one time. Gareth resigned from his school position in 2016, Nathaniel in 2020, and Stacey in December of 2021, reportedly because of the mandatory Covid vaccination policy. Both Nathaniel and Stacy were reported to be well-regarded in their schools before becoming radicalized.
Four officers were investigating the property on a “welfare check” requested by police in the neighboring state of New South Wales. The welfare check was instigated by a call from the estranged wife of Nathaniel Train. The three assailants were reported, in the Daily Mail, to be methamphetamine addicts. Meth is known to make people paranoid. From dailymail.co.uk:
It is understood Constable Rachel McCrow, 29, and Constable Matthew Arnold, 26, arrived in the first vehicle, and met up with a second car containing Constable Keely Brough and Constable Randall Kirk, both aged 28, before approaching the property.
McCrow and Arnold then honked their horn to alert the residents of their presence. When there was no movement from inside the house, the four officers got out of their cars and jumped over the locked fence.
Seconds later, a shower of bullets descended on the four officers, believed to have been fired by Nathaniel and Gareth Train and Gareth’s wife Stacey….
On Tuesday, Daily Mail Australia revealed the Trains had spent years fortifying the wooden home into a makeshift bunker to try to fend off an assault by police which they had long anticipated.
They had also been bingeing on methamphetamine, with Gareth posting increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories online that claimed the 1996 Port Arthur massacre was a military operation and Princess Diana was killed as a ‘blood sacrifice’.
After the initial killing, the Train trio posted a video online claiming the police came to kill them, and they killed the police instead. From theguardian.com:
After ambushing police officers with a hail of bullets, Stacey and Gareth Train huddled together in the dark at their remote Queensland property and recorded a video.
“They came to kill us and we killed them,” Gareth said in the video, uploaded on Monday night and still circulating online.
“If you don’t defend yourself against these devils and demons, you’re a coward.”
Devils and demons are descriptions often used by methamphetamine addicts when involved in violent crimes in the United States. The Guardian article mentions several Christian end-of-times references as well. In the Guardian article, the Trains claim several previous “welfare checks” and harassment by authorities.
The Premier of Queensland, Australia, Annastacia Palaszczuk. has used the incident to call for a national gun registry. Palaszczuk has been the leftist labor party PM in Queensland since 2015. From abc.net.au news:
Ms Palaszczuk echoed her comments, saying a national register should be discussed at national cabinet.
“Anything we can do to tighten gun laws in this country would be a good thing,” she said.
Australia has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. The laws vary by state but conform to a set of national standards. The standards were agreed to by the Australian states in the rush to pass draconian gun restrictions after the Port Arthur mass killing in 1996. The extreme gun laws have had little effect on homicide or suicide levels. Mass killings have occurred after the 1997 laws were implemented. From news.com.au:
National cabinet will consider options to better regulate gun ownership in Australia in the wake of two police officers and a bystander being killed in Queensland, the Prime Minister has announced.
The rush to use the killing of young police officers to impose even more restrictive gun measures seems well supported in the Australian media.
How a national gun registry could have prevented these police deaths is far from clear. Firearms possession is not uncommon in rural Australia.