Few people will not be outraged by the cowardly and frenzied assault on a North Island policeman at the weekend by machete-wielding teenagers.
The face that stared out of this newspaper, and others, on Monday was a patchwork quilt of stapled and stitched wounds.
Senior Constable Bruce Mellor, a 35-year veteran of the Ministry of Transport and the New Zealand Police, is lucky to be alive.
Once again questions arose, on the very day a report on the subject was presented to Minister of Police Judith Collins from Police Commissioner Howard Broad, about arming the country's police force.
Confronted by the evidence of such ferocious and random acts of violence against law enforcement officers, a growing call for arming police as a self-defence tool and law enforcement aid is inevitable, not least from the Police Association - which has long championed such moves.
But as heinous as the unprovoked attack on Snr Const Mellor near Taihape was, and as shocking as the ages - 14 and 18 - of his assailants, the blanket provision of arms to police has to be carefully considered lest changes in practice lead to greater dangers for both police and public, rather than less.
Mr Broad's draft report to Mrs Collins indeed does advocate training more police to use firearms and the placing of more firearms in greater numbers of police vehicles. No decision has yet been made on which vehicles would carry guns in lock boxes.
Mrs Collins and Mr Broad reiterated that the arming of all police in New Zealand was unnecessary, but also indicated rural police officers in patrol cars were most likely to receive the extra guns.
Mr Broad also noted mooted changes would remove requirements for police to get authorisation and set up cordons before weapons can be used.
While the circumstances are not entirely clear, and the evidence has yet to be tested, the incident in which Snr Const Mellor was grievously wounded illustrates some of the complexity in the arguments surrounding the arming of police.
The case can be made that the experienced country policeman may have been in even greater danger if he had been armed.
He reportedly neither saw nor heard his assailants approach and, once incapacitated, any weapon he might have been carrying, or had access to, would have been fair game for his attackers to either use or make off with.
This familiar argument - which consistently informs the position against arming of the police - ignores the deterrent effect of a policeman such as Snr Const Mellor carrying a weapon.
Would the teenagers have been so inclined to tackle him if they thought one false step in their assault of the officer might have seen either or both of them shot dead?
There is a school of thought that with some force says "no", and another that suggests in certain circumstances assailants, driven by anger, desperation, alcohol or drugs, simply do not consciously weigh up the risks of their actions.
While wholesale arming of the police is a prospect unwelcome in this country, there is evidence that easier access to weaponry - in frontline city incident patrol cars or in the vehicles of lone country officers - is both appropriate and necessary for the safety of members of the force, and also of the general public.
But if they are to be introduced, such changes must be managed and supervised with utmost care and be preceded for each individual officer with a period of training. Hence Mr Broad's recommendations relating to firearms training.
For it will take only one or two high-profile incidents of civilians caught in crossfire, or a marked increase in the incidence of gun violence, for the policy - and hence the police themselves - to come into disrepute.
Cases involving police officers shooting civilians, albeit in self-defence, attract a high level of scrutiny, through internal police investigations, the media and the courts.
This suggests New Zealanders remain at least uneasy at the prospect of a routinely armed force, and that Mr Broad's measured suggestions and more constrained policies are more likely to find favour with the general public than the imprecations towards universal arming by the Police Association.
