Australia's top cops just admitted what Americans already know: the state decides who gets to protect themselves and who doesn't — and they call equality 'favouritism' when it inconveniences them.

NSW police deputy commissioner David Hudson told a royal commission into antisemitism that letting the Community Security Group — the Jewish community's own trained security organization — carry guns at public events would be seen as "favouritism." His alternative? A "user pays" model where event organizers hire police. In other words: you can have protection, if you can afford the government's price.

Hudson said the police force was "generally opposed" to individual communities being able to carry arms or use body armour. "Allowing certain areas of society, no matter what those areas are, to have special privileges in relation to their security, would further fracture … relationships that are fairly tenuous between different groups," he said. "It would certainly be looked upon by others as the police or governments … showing favouritism to that group."

Read that again. A government official called the ability to defend your own community a "special privilege." Not a right. Not a natural extension of self-preservation. A privilege — one the state grants or withholds at its discretion.

The Australian Jewish Association's president, Robert Gregory, told the commission the Jewish community wouldn't feel safe at open-air events "unless there is armed protection." He pointed out the obvious: "If the police can be there, that's great, but they can't be all the time." The Chanukah by the Sea event in December had roughly 2,000 attendees. Four officers were assigned. It's unclear whether they were even told to stay for the whole event.

So the police can't cover you, but they won't let you cover yourself. That's not a safety policy. That's a monopoly.

And if you think the government's emergency infrastructure has your back anyway, consider this: Australia just ran its first nationwide test of AusAlert, a new emergency warning system. The federal emergency management minister, Kristy McBain, celebrated that 94% of targeted cell towers broadcast the alert. She also acknowledged some phones didn't receive it at all — including brand-new iPhone 15 Pros and 17 Pros — and shrugged it off: "There is no one avenue of communication that is 100% successful." Domestic violence advocates had warned the alert could expose hidden "safe phones" used by people fleeing abusers. The official advice? Turn your phone off for 24 hours. The system designed to save you might also endanger you. Trust the plan.

The founders didn't draft the Second Amendment so the government could dole out self-defense permissions to politically favored groups. They drafted it because they understood what Hudson accidentally confessed: when the state holds a monopoly on protection, protection becomes a commodity — and ordinary citizens get priced out.

The Jewish community in Australia is asking for the same thing every free person should have: the means to defend itself when the state can't or won't. Calling that request "favouritism" doesn't expose a problem with the request. It exposes a problem with the system.