AS DETAILS continue to emerge of the six fatal stabbings in Jersey, it is clear that whatever triggered the incident, it was an act of unspeakable brutality.

Eyewitness accounts portray a frenzied knife attack, at least one woman begging for her life and children running for theirs.

By any standards, this was a horrific level of violence and somehow all the worse because it appeared to have come from nowhere and was unleashed in a quiet street and on what is understood to be the alleged attacker’s own family.

The raw barbarity of the killings and the impact they have had on family, friends, neighbours and the wider Jersey community is immeasurable and the consequences will be felt for years.

For those fortunate enough not to be so closely involved, one of the questions is how society protects itself and its citizens against seemingly random bouts of murderous intent.

School shootings in America – unspeakably dreadful though they are – feel remote. But the massacre in Norway and the riots in Britain show how close to home these things can be.

That is not to be alarmist. However, managing risk and getting the balance right between repression and protection is a crucial issue for governments and police forces everywhere.

Guernsey’s new police chief gained considerable attention for buying one armoured and two armed response vehicles, yet few would now question the validity of having an immediately-available firearms capability.

Similarly with Tasers. Controversial, certainly, but had Jersey’s killer subsequently turned on the public, they are a non-lethal way of disabling a violent person.

For Guernsey, however, use of them is not dictated by operational circumstances but by whether they actually work.

An EU export ban on potential weapons of torture prevents Guernsey from buying replacement battery packs and ammunition, which are running out, and Jersey is prevented from owning them at all.

Resolving the impasse rests with the UK and Guernsey has made repeated, high-level attempts to get the block removed but without success.

In the current circumstances, it is to be hoped that Britain’s bureaucrats now better understand the urgency behind Guernsey’s requests for the embargo to be lifted.