Thefatal shootingoftwo firefighters in New York stateon Christmas Eve underscored firefighters’ vulnerability at incident scenes and raised concerns about firefighters exposure toviolence. It also spotlighted a contentious issue in the fire service itself: whether firefighters should carry firearms on the job, a question188金宝搏是正规吗Editorial Cartoonist Paul Combs addressed in arecent Web cartoon.
But the issue of firefighters armed with guns is not a new one, as demonstrated by a recent discovery in the Fire Engineering Vault.
“A firefighter gives himself to the protection of life and not the destruction of life,” reads the December 1968 Editor’s Opinion by Jim Casey. Another page included in this week’s download offers a January 1966 editorial that also addresses the issue. In both of these instances, Casey is talking about firefighters responding to riots and civil unrest, but the fact remains that firefighters have always been thrust intodangerous situations, and the question of where the role offirefighterends and police officer begins has persisted for some time.
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