I'm not a big fan of guns but I think it's time we armed all police officers. Too close to home today :(
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I'm not a big fan of guns but I think it's time we armed all police officers. Too close to home today :(
Its the obvious and understandable reaction but Im not convinced that routine arming is the way forward. Anyway, from the pics Ive seen a lot of the cops were carrying guns.
Holy shit is this a bad idea.
that area of london would have had Armed Officers walking around on patrol and they have a massive amount of trained officers ready to use arms, the ARU in central london is a fair size
Now imagine something similar happening in a sleepy small town in Gloucester or Somerset, the ARU might take 30 mins to arrive on the scene and then it will likely only be 6 of them, think of the damage someone could do in 30 mins :angry: a scary thought
i know the government has said they are training up more AR officers, but not enough and not fast enough
The main problem with routinely arming the police is that the bad guys will also arm themselves.
UK becomes like the USA in no time.
I don't know what the solution to an arsehole with a knife is, but I know giving every superiority-complex meathead bobby a hand-cannon is going to cause more problems than it solves.
even if you are right, the chances are the guy would have stabbed a fair few more people by then
yet if a armed PO was only a few mins away, people wouldnt have to " be a hero " and have a go, they would know, get out the way and in a few mins the police would arrive and put the guy down
Are you kidding?
Read my post again and ask yourself if putting thousands of guns into the hands of lowly paid civil servants who often choose a career in policing in order to assert their authority over others is the correct solution to one guy with a knife?
No looking at the US required for that conundrum.
I think the Police officer who was killed was actually armed.
If he went from one thatched cottage to the next stabbing a little old lady each time he'd kill hundreds. Back in the real world however the second he confronted more than a couple of people he'd be tackled.
This is a knee jerk reaction to a problem that's not currently there and I wouldn't want to see the majority of our egotist bobbies with a gun either
I would suppose the numbers of officers in London is vastly different even to the number in a smaller city and therefore before you have "massive amount of trained officers ready to use arms" you firstly would need to find a large number of new recruits and pay for these contracts.
If we think about what this incident was (a small and limited number of attackers in a concentrated area) then we may compare it to the Tunisia beach attacks. The greater presences of armed forces in this previous incident did not stop the attacker any more quickly that today.
Whatever the decision I would agree with the poster who suggested that a few hours after an attack is probably not the time for major policy change.
no
because its easy to use the US and its armed officers are a example to win the " we do not want to arm our police " argument
I know a 5 armed police officers, 2 current, 2 trained and 1 just retired ( about a month ago )
I would trust the judgement of them all and while you will argue " but thats just 5 " i can honestly say that if they had to make a call i would trust them with my life
the bloke next door to me used a " tazer " in January, he has had 8 meetings about it so far, it was all caught on CCTV and on his body cam aswell, these guys are trained and trained well
Sorry but all I see by arming the police is creating opportunities for would be terrorists
All a terrorist needs to do is overpower one bobby then he can go popping caps in farrrrrrrr more people than a crazy with a knife could stab
Bad idea all round
from what i understand, the government are training more AR officers, we of course need more Police, but the police we have could be trained and armed
a fairly poor example, as the armed security in Tunisia is hardly the same as our trained AR Officers
of course you will never stop these attacks, i have never said we can, but giving the police a fighting chance can only help imho
but it is something i think we need to look into
I'm with the colonel on this one ,I hope I never see the day when our police are armed.
I also don't think that the majority of current officers would even want to be armed, but I think if they were then the next breed of police would be a far power hungry bunch than they are now.
Also where do you draw the line? Would you want armed police at the football? Chelsea v Milwall, potential for trouble, potential for officers to be injured carrying out their duty, would you want them armed to keep any hoolies in line?
Agree with Colonel on this, they've got tasers which should be adequate to disable a knife-wielding maniac.
As you would expect in an airport - one of the places police are armed in numbers
Now have the same situation with your village bobby and there's not so much back up on hand
Arming police will simply make terrorists change their tactics, it will not stop them attacking
point 1 - Are you kidding?
i pointed out that i am not kidding, as the US argument is easy to use
point 2 - Lowly paid civil servants who often choose a career in policing in order to assert their authority
i pointed out i know 5 armed Officers and none are meathead bobby's with superiority-complex or a Lowly paid civil servants who chose a career in policing in order to assert their authority over others
fairly simple
I also wonder how the OP feels about giving guns to the Muslim members of our police force? What about the members of the force with a history of violence and anger issues?
Are we also going to pretend that corruption doesn't exist in the police force and that none of these guns would end up in the wrong hands?
It's just such a terrible idea and I hope it doesn't gain some sort of traction in the heat of the moment because I wouldn't be surprised if our government started to push for it.