Poll: Arming the UK Police

[erztez]

That video is silly indeed, and would be solved a lot quicker if the cops had at least pistols.

But I have always held the strong belief that the people should have the ability to be as well equipped as the government they elect.

Good luck equiping the civilian population with Abraham tanks and Apache gunships. As noble as your intention sounds, it's completely useless.

Nah, M1A2s and AH-64s and their kind are pretty much worthless in urban warfare environment. Cities are where medium/long barrels and low-yield explosives SHINE.

It's not like modern militaries aren't equiping themselves with various other tools to deal with situations like that, tools that outperform anything a civilian can get. Not to mention training.

Oh, but you don't count on the fact that in case of civil war, half the army will usually go with the insurrectionists
Also, if I ever feel the need to overthrow my government(doubtful, the guys here are ineffectual enough to be harmless), I'm heading straight towards the nearest army supply depot. On the other hand, our army is still using AK-47 knockoffs...so maybe we should just stick with baseball bats.

OT: Was just thinking about the cop situation here, and I think I know why I support them having guns. It's because I'm pretty sure that whatever handguns they're issued, I can get better, lowest bidder and all

 

[BGH122]

But his statistic was from the UK's crime statistics, not his own, so his biases are irrelevant.

Haven't we already established that "gun crime being up by 34%" is too vague so far to be credible?

Here we go. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2656875.stm]

There's the article. It's quite interesting, especially with regards to NYC's historically persistently higher murder rate.

 

[Daveman]

I don't think they have the right to make that decision. It's too easy to fall back on it and just shoot someone. I understand they face nutters. My friends dad once had to arrest a guy who was totally off his face on meth and he sprayed the guy several times and it did nothing and he almost got his ear bitten off. I still don't think guns are a good idea, not when we could just use tasers or something.

 

[mb16]

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

actually it depends on what task they are being used for. Other groups use G36c and others HK417.

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.

In the uk you can have a gun. For instant i have:
a over-under shotgun
a semi-auto shotgun (in real tree cammo)
a .22 air rifle
Also in the next few years i hope to get my Fire Arm Certificate(FAC) so then i can get a pull-back rifle (basically bolt action) Once i have that i may buy things like this

 

[EvilPicnic]

Wha-?! No, knife > retractable batons (we don't use truncheons anymore, like all sincere attempts to defend ourselves, they're barbaric). Did you genuinely watch that video and think 'hey, he's got a 2 foot machete, but look at how that retractable baton strike to the approved strike area in the back of the leg slightly annoyed him!'?

I meant a telescoping baton, and it certainly does > a small concealed knife like most muggers use.

This madman with a machete thing is obviously an exceptional circumstance that was handled badly at the time. It is not cause to give your average bobby a gun for his patrol past the school-grounds and around the church.

 

[LandoCristo]

While I think that cops should be able to defend themselves in a pinch, if British cops haven't needed guns before, I'm not sure they should be armed at all times.

 

[BGH122]

I would prefer such a person be eliminated from society permanently, or studied from within a glass tube.

I disagree with execution, I only ask that the police be granted the ability to defend themselves and the public.

I meant a telescoping baton, and it certainly does > a small concealed knife like most muggers use.

This madman with a machete thing is obviously an exceptional circumstance that was handled badly at the time. It is not cause to give your average bobby a gun for his patrol past the school-grounds and around the church.

Those things the officers in the video are brandishing (and struck the armed suspect with) are telescopic batons. They're thin metal or carbon derivative tubes; they do very little if one follows the correct procedure to 'strike to the back of the leg or thigh'. A knife, with no such striking restriction, is far more effective.

 

[b3nn3tt]

Yeh, there are several over here. A lot of them are traffic ones, where the camera is set up in the police car, but even those have their fair share of power-trippers. There are others where they follow police round town centres on Friday nights, or to parties where people have complained, things like that.

Regardless of the power-trippers, I still can't see that having police carry firearms would help anything, it would just lead to an increase in gun-related deaths. The only scenarios in which I can conceive that police would need guns is if the criminal has a gun, in which case the special gun units are sent anyway.

But you must accept, and be okay with saying, that you're essentially arguing that the police should continue to face better armed criminals on a daily basis with no means to retrieve the weapon from the criminal by force. You must also say that you're okay with police officers dying preventably so that their murderers can live. This just seems like a callous disregard for the people who've dedicated their lives (sometimes at the cost of their life) to keeping you safe.

A knife, regardless of size, beats a hollow metal tube any day especially when the 'approved strike zone' for that hollow metal tube is 'to the back of the leg or thigh'. Seriously, it's like the public and politicians want us to die.

I think, though, that there's a difference between reasonable force and shooting someone. In the case of a police officer vs. someone wielding a knife, why would shooting the knife-bearer be a better solution than, say, tasering them or using a bean-bag shotgun. There are plenty of non-lethal alternatives to guns that still have the effect of incapacitating a criminal.

That being said, I do agree that things have become too bureaucratic. I think it's ridiculous that police officers can lose there jobs and even face prison for deviating from the 'approved strike zone' when attempting to take down someone who could do them some serious harm. But I don't think that guns are the answer to this.

 

[Master Kuja]

I've addressed this previously in the thread, but I'll repost it here:

I don't understand this logic, could you elucidate? Why would firearms in the hands of officers entail firearms in the hands of criminals? It's a movie nonsense that minor criminals arm up to fight the police; criminals know that the murder of a police officer is one of the few offences that'll see 25-life. Minor criminals arm up to assault the public and other criminals, the police are an irrelevance. Most of the time, a gang with a gun has that gun because of threats from other gangs, not coppers.

Madmen, as pictured in the video, arm up sporadically and with little pattern. Sometimes heavily, sometimes with whatever's lying around. Since they've got no clear plan, the police's armaments shouldn't affect theirs.

Organised career criminals do arm up heavily if they're expecting police resistance, but they're already packing assault rifles so unless they're going to one up us with tomahawk missles then I don't really see what more they can do.

My belief that this would be the case would more or less be psychological, sure, firearms in the hands of the police would deter lesser criminals, but those who are intent on commiting crime? You damn well better believe that they'll still go for it and I firmly believe that if they're set on doing it, they can and will arm up in response to the police getting weapons in their hands.

This wouldn't even be precluded to organised criminals, the average criminal that finds themselves determined to rob a store, or some equivalent action, for whatever needs must, would most likely arm up in order to better defend themselves against the police that will inevitable come a-knockin'.

My belief may be wrong, but I still stand by the fact that a criminal will most likely think "If the police have guns, and are willing to use them on ME, why shouldn't I have one to defend myself from them?"

It's all down to basic human psychology, if a person perceives an increased sense of threat, then they'll equip themselves accordingly.

 

[88chaz88]

But his statistic was from the UK's crime statistics, not his own, so his biases are irrelevant.

Haven't we already established that "gun crime being up by 34%" is too vague so far to be credible?

Here we go. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2656875.stm]

There's the article. It's quite interesting, especially with regards to NYC's historically persistently higher murder rate.

Well I'd rather be mugged than murdered. Crime in the UK is a little higher that the US, but assaults and especially murders are down. Oh and rape too.

Oh but we'll blame this on "particular cultural factors" shall we?

Edit: This made me lol.

"When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million."

Really? I guess this can't be down to much less disposable income, less firearms circulating around the world, or them being much less effective back then. Not to mention the less crime that got reported back then.

 

[joemegson94]

As regular UK police don't carry guns, you get fewer incidents like shooting dead a man who has a model swords, the kind of crap you hear about i the US.

 

[BGH122]

My belief that this would be the case would more or less be psychological, sure, firearms in the hands of the police would deter lesser criminals, but those who are intent on commiting crime? You damn well better believe that they'll still go for it and I firmly believe that if they're set on doing it, they can and will arm up in response to the police getting weapons in their hands.

This wouldn't even be precluded to organised criminals, the average criminal that finds themselves determined to rob a store, or some equivalent action, for whatever needs must, would most likely arm up in order to better defend themselves against the police that will inevitable come a-knockin'.

But this already happens. If someone is robbing a store because they're a penniless drug addict (as they usually are) then they can't afford those highly marked up black market gun prices. If they're a professional blag then they're already using a firearm (typically a legally purchased shotgun using illegal ammo registered to someone else with the end sawn off). This belief that granting the police guns causes criminals to buy guns is fallacious, not least because criminals aren't setting out to fight the police (as laid out already).

Well I'd rather be mugged than murdered. Crime in the UK is a little higher that the US, but assaults and especially murders are down. Oh and rape too.

Oh but we'll blame this on "particular cultural factors" shall we?

Fine, if she's wrong then refute her. Or I guess you could just opt for pretending that socioeconomic factors (which her historical report of NYC's murder rate vs London proves to be a cause) don't exist and mocking her.

 

[googleback]

But his statistic was from the UK's crime statistics, not his own, so his biases are irrelevant.

Haven't we already established that "gun crime being up by 34%" is too vague so far to be credible?

Here we go. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2656875.stm]

There's the article. It's quite interesting, especially with regards to NYC's historically persistently higher murder rate.

yes, 35% of what it was before,still not very much though. all of a sudden giving everyone the right to bear arms would be a death sentence for a lot of people.

It's literally the worst possible thing to legalize right now.

EDIT: THAT'S FROM 2003!?

 

[Nerfherder17]

It would be ideal to arm the police. Except too many of them are just thugs. The idea of being protected is ok, but I don't wanna be threatened by these apes for walking around with friends after a certain time, especially since we've never caused anyone any harm. I wouldn't want anyone to have that much power. If police need weapons, then have a dispatchable armed response force, but lesser than a SWAT team, which would be useful for smaller incedents but save recources.

 

[88chaz88]

As regular UK police don't carry guns, you get fewer incidents like shooting dead a man who has a model swords, the kind of crap you hear about i the US.

I don't know about being shot "dead". Just being shot at all would put a pisser on my day.