I have to agree with you when you speak of the fire service being shot at and smacking ambulance staff while drunk. Now at the risk of going off topic (and being accused of looking back with rose tinted spectacles) these to me are both merely symptoms of a wider deeper societal problem. People know that when they call the fire and ambulance services they will get a response. The response has become the norm, if people knew that if their house was on fire they would have to put it out themselves or if they were ill they would have to sort themselves out they would never assult these crews (no matter how drunk). Also and more importantly they would never tolerate those amongst them who perpetrate these acts. The welfare state (and I'm not talking only about benefits, but ideas that there is no right and wrong, that whatever mistakes you make the state will help you and cushion you, that all choices are equally valid) has cushioned people from the consequences of their actions and consequently they act irresponsibly. The state furthermore reserves unto itself all control mechanisms so whereas it would have been that if you did something like shooting at the fire service you would at the very least have been shunned by your community now nothing happens. It is pointless an individual or group taking action against people who shoot at the fire service; report them they'll get a light sentence then come for you; beat them up and you'll get the sentence, but the state in depriving the ordinary people of natural control mechanisms coupled with the concept that there is no morality is creating a monster that will one day rage out of control and no amount of statutes will stop it. It is people from this category, who need these services most, as they are conditioned to rely on the state for everything, who are in the frontline of perpetrating these crimes. Would the drunk who assults ambulance crew do so if s/he knew that in doing so, if they are later assulted no ambulance crew will touch them? I don't think so. I haven't mentioned the police, but I feel the police are in a slightly different category. I condemn all senseless unprovoked and drunk attacks against the police, but the police as part of the job they do, know they will be in situations where adrenaline is high and some fighting will be necessary. They receive training and carry offensive weapons although the state constrains them far too tightly in their use. Nevertheless, the police should perform many functions important to society and they should never have to put up with the verbal abuse, and assults on the scale that they do.