Poll: Arming the UK Police

[Shoqiyqa]

If the police can have guns, I should be able to.

People in the UK can't have guns? I mean that is tough. In NYC it is difficult to get a firearm for everywhere carry, but you are allowed to have one in your home for protection.

We can. Shotguns up to two rounds capacity (that's two barrels or a two-round magazine on a pump) are fairly easy to get. Rifles require a certificate listing the individual weapons and you're supposed to have a reason you need "that one as well as that one," e.g.: "That one's for rabbits and various other vermin on the ground; that one's for muntjac that the little one wouldn't take out reliably and for that mink if it ever comes back and the air rifle's for pigeons in trees and on the roof, which is an angle at which you don't want to fire anything bigger." Pistols are a bugger to get legally, though, ever since Dunblane. Single-shot target pistols are available to people who are already on the Olympic pistol team ... while we have one ... but storage rules are a bit tight.

...

Even the police admit it happens [http://www.policeone.com/police-products/firearm-accessories/firearms-storage/articles/1996906-Fighting-the-contagious-fire-phenomenon/] ... and the media like to report it:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=2681947

Last June, six Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies fired more than 50 shots into the car in which drunken driving suspect Carl Williams was driving, after his car rammed a police vehicle following a chase. One deputy fired so many shots that he had to reload his weapon during the incident.

When 44-year-old drug suspect Winston Hayes' SUV lurched forward and hit a police car, deputies unloaded their weapons, firing 120 shots. Four bullets ended up hitting Hayes (who survived), one hit a deputy sheriff, 11 hit patrol cars and 11 hit five homes in the neighborhood (one of them ended up tearing a hole in a homeowner's hat).

There's one reason not to make the police an attractive career to someone who really, really wants a badge and a gun. I can think of a few others.

Firearms should, imo, be kept out of the routine stuff and brought in when needed. That doesn't mean we should have fewer armed officers available, just that the bobby who comes out to stop two kids messing with the bird box or investigate a littering incident shouldn't come with a thing that can accidentally kill someone a mile away if he makes a mistake, like if he gets racking the slide and dropping the magazine out the wrong way round [http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/footage30_1.html], or at shorter distances if he makes one heck of a lot of mistakes all at the same time [http://www.arrse.co.uk/intelligence-cell/99231-police-worker-shot-safety-demonstration-sues-%C2%A3300k.html].

Now, give me a way to get there first next time someone's out to kidnap and butcher his own daughter "to restore family honour" after she decides she'd rather not be "married to" some brute fifty years older than her, give me an L98, L81 or L42, a Mosin-Nagant '38 or something like that and three times as many rounds as there are scum and I'll show you "respect for other cultures." Hers, not theirs. After all, if you're going to say there's a time and a place for everything, you've got to be willing to recognise that time and place.

 

[Lord Doomhammer]

I'm gonna go with the first option, Get the police a gun, and maybe a shotgun in the cop car. Granted this is coming from an american perspective, and I realize america is a much different place from the UK, but in cities there is always going to be the threat of a violent criminal who won't back down.

On another note, get your police some decent cop cars. It would seem most European cops use something like a Vauxal Astra, or Volvo xc930 or something... we mostly use Ford Crown Victoria cars, the Police Interceptor version, which is quite frankly a beast.

 

[Captain Pirate]

Option 2. Option 1 I think leaves them too open for someone to just pickpocket it, which is quite likely to happen I think. I mean, cop's distracted, some dickhead sees a Glock sticking out his pocket, so he runs up and takes a grab and bam! Officer's helpless because someone's taken him by surprise and now got a gun to his head.
Potential nutter then could proceed to easily kill the policeman and other innocent people.

If option 2 was the case, then they would be fine to set out with a weapon to a situation that required it.
That video in the OP would've been solved much more quickly if a policeman simply pulled a pistol and told him to drop it.

Off-topic: Personally, though, I think the cops should've tackled him from behind while he was going after some other officers. The rest of the policemen could then have easily run in and cuffed him.

 

[Actual]

On an aside; the commentary from the lads with the camera in the video is priceless. No boys, I don't think he looks happy either.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

They need guns, simple as that. The presence of firearms alone is usually enough to defuse the situation, especially when the other guy doesn't have them. If you had a machete running around merry ol' England, and some fellow comes out of his house and points a shotgun at your face and tells you to drop your weapon, you'd be much more inclined to listen than if he just had what is basically a stick.

I mean, who else finds it idiotic that the weapon that firearms units are equipped with is a fricking MP5?!

I'd MUCH rather be using a Thompson than an MP5. If the bad guy has kevlar, the MP5 can't bring him down.

Let's not start that again, eh? There's armour that'll stop a 5.56mm, which has a lot more drilling ability than a 9mm or .45ACP [http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot5.htm] and I could kill you stone-cold dead with a single round of .22LR while you were wearing it unless it covers your eyes.

 

[Whateveralot]

I sleep well knowing these men are on the streets protecting us from danger every day.

But are you safer?

No, you are not.

Cops - guns = lolwut?

They're no better than a neighborhood watch.

Not entirely true. Yes, they might have the same stuff on them, but they'll still have a lot of training in self-defence, disarming, etc. etc.

Either way, after watching the video, I wonder why there was not a single officer with a gun. That could've ended this very quickly.

 

[shroomie]

Im sorry but this just proves that the police in this country have become a joke. Im not saying the inclusion of firearms in all situations is neccessary, it can be quite intimidating sometimes. However if that many people can't take down one man then something is wrong. I hope somebody shows this to the Home Secretary and they start doing something.

 

[RaNDM G]

I'll go with Option 2, but a taser would have been a better option in that situation.

 

[CarlMin]

I just randomly selected one of the options seeing as my usual habit of just clicking a poll option without watching the video and thus skewing the results was made impossible.

Nah, just kidding. Overall, I'd prefer to have an all-time armed police force.

 

[Actual]

I'm English, I do not want armed cops on the streets apart from in the worst possible situation. however I do think the police should be better equipped.

Every car should have riot shields in the back, I don't know why it took these officers so long to get them out.

Every officer should have a tazer and either a bean bag gun or a a gun loaded with rubber bullets for use only if someone's life is in jeopardy. These will provide the same protection as real guns and should mistake be made and an innocent person shot the chance of them dying will be very small.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

... they might still be a tad iffy about that big thing that went down about 10 years ago.. better safe than sorry.

WHAT?!?

Seriously, what?

What's he going to do, shoot a hydraulic line so the aircraft spirals past the tower and splashes into the sea? Sprint to a rooftop, throw a grapnel as it passes, climb along the wing, open the door, climb in, shoot the hijackers and land the plane safely? What?

That or you meant the Bush twins wouldn't have been drinking under-age if they'd been shot on the doorstep.

.....

Wait a minute.

That cop at the open door appears to have a board glued to the back of his shoulder. What's going on there?

 

[Jacob Haggarty]

i say no. People in england dont seem to like the police as it is, giving the police weapons isnt going to help.

Besides, it just wouldnt work. There was recently a big hoo-haa about some fella who was pushed to the ground during i riot, and unfortunately died. The news story went on for weeks, about inquest this, trial that, verdict here, etc.

Now imagine how much of an uproar it would cause if a police man actually SHOT someone?

Aye, it would be pretty bad.

EDIT: option 3 is what i mean. It would just be madness to COMPLETELY remove any sort of fire-arm from the police services.

 

[CarlMin]

I'm gonna go with the first option, Get the police a gun, and maybe a shotgun in the cop car. Granted this is coming from an american perspective, and I realize america is a much different place from the UK, but in cities there is always going to be the threat of a violent criminal who won't back down.

On another note, get your police some decent cop cars. It would seem most European cops use something like a Vauxal Astra, or Volvo xc930 or something... we mostly use Ford Crown Victoria cars, the Police Interceptor version, which is quite frankly a beast.

pffft

Nah...

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I'm quite happy with the way things are at the moment. Specialist firearms teams ready on call. That said, there might be a need for more of them in some areas but in general I don't want the everyday copper armed with firearms.

 

[rossatdi]

The idea of arming the day to day UK police officer is one so staggeringly stupid that it almost completely defies belief.

Outside a couple of particularly bad areas, gun crime is limited in the UK.

Wiki listed figures from 2000

Percentage of homicides carried out with a firearm:
UK 8% | US 46%

Intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants:
UK 1.7 | US 5.5

Therfore...

Intentional homicides by firearm per 100,000 inhabitants:
UK 0.14 | US 2.5

So for every gun murder in the UK there are 18 in the US per head of population.

==

There is no real culture of gun use in the UK and there is no massive crime wave of dangerous criminality regardless of what certain (heavily politically biased) newspapers say. Calm down, everything is fine as it is.

 

[TheOneandOnly]

Firearms in a dense domestic area? No thanks. At least the machete guy can only hurt you if you're thick enough to get close to him, a stray bullet (Entirely possible regardless of the officer's marksmanship) could be disastrous.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Counter to the OP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

Specialist Police need to be armed. Non-specialist should never carry firearms.