EVERY time a police officer sets out on their shift, they face real risks that most of us will never, thankfully, have to confront.
While nothing can lessen the devastation that unfolded at Wiemballa, 180km north-west of Towoomba on Queensland's Darling Downs on Monday, we should be thankful that such wanton violence is extremely rare, by global standards, in this country.
Four officers went to an isolated homestead to investigate a missing persons report.
Two constables, Rachel McCrow, 29, and Matthew Arnold, 26, were shot dead.
So was a neighbour who came to investigate, Alan Dare, 58.
Another constable, Ronald Kirk, was shot in the leg, while a fourth, Keely Brough, hid in long grass set alight, apparently to flush her out.
The trio inside the house, brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train, and Gareth's wife Stacey, died in a subsequent shootout.
The reason for the killings are a mystery. Nathaniel Train, a former community college principal, was reportedly dealing with mental health issues after a heart attack, and there are reports that the brothers had entered the world of online conspiracies.
Similarities have been drawn between Monday's events and Melbourne's Walsh Street murders in 1988, when Constables Steven Tynan and Damien Eyre were lured into an ambush and gunned down in cold blood.
Then, and now, it is deliberate murder of the worst sort. As the police community grieves the loss of the two young constables, it is hoped that their families and friends find some solace in knowing that their grief has touched the nation.
This tragedy has again raised questions about access to guns. Some 650,000 firearms were collected through the gun buybacks that John Howard ordered after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. Yet today, this country has more than 3.5 million registered firearms, with an estimate of another 250,000 undeclared weapons.
Even so, our murder rate of less than one fatality a year per 100,000 people is a contrast to north and south America, where homicide rates are typically in double figures and in some places up to 130 per 100,000. Thankfully, that is not us.
But if gun laws need to be further tightened, they must be, otherwise Constables McCrow and Arnold will have died in vain.
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