Brits and handguns.

Ranb said:
How does your claim jive with an incident like this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes
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Hardly your average arrest, was it? Most Brits are OK with armed police being used in specific, even if that does - if very rare circumstances - lead to the death of suspect/s, if such action is justified, e.g. this one, which nobody seems to have lost much sleep over. On the other hand, we don't want regular police work to be conducted down the barrel of a gun.
 
Especially because there is no need for the police to be armed all the time. Indeed I am wondering what the argument to have all police armed could be - factuality - based on.
 
Darat said:
Especially because there is no need for the police to be armed all the time. Indeed I am wondering what the argument to have all police armed could be - factuality - based on.
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I had this discussion with a US friend once. He was absolutely convinced that if the police were unarmed then they would be helpless victims before criminals, who would of course arm themselves and run roughshod over the cops in their killing frenzy.

In the end I just had to point out that this does not in fact happen. This simply isn't an accurate description of life in the UK, on any level. And he was at a complete loss to explain why.

I've noticed this in gun debates, actually. A common talking point for the pro gun side is that gun laws do nothing, because criminals just break them anyway. But this just is not so, at least not in the UK. It seems that the argument rests on the idea that there are two types of people who are fundamentally different - those who obey the law, and those who are utterly and entirely indifferent to the law.

But that's absolutely false. Criminals are people like anybody else, and whilst some of them doubtless are indifferent to any law, most of them have a graded scale of what they will do. In the UK there is a culture where even a lot of criminals won't go near a gun because they know it's bad business all around. A bad thing to be involved in, a bad thing to be caught with, and worst of all bad for them in the end if they actually use the thing. Whilst there absolutely are criminals who will carry guns and even shoot them, they are a rather small minority even of criminals.
 
There was an interesting piece of Home Office research a few years back that showed that many British criminals with access to firearms often chose either not to use them, or not to load them. Some would also chose a replica rather than a live firearm, even if one was available, depending on the crime they intended to commit.
 
Information Analyst said:
There was an interesting piece of Home Office research a few years back that showed that many British criminals with access to firearms often chose either not to use them, or not to load them. Some would also chose a replica rather than a live firearm, even if one was available, depending on the crime they intended to commit.
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having seen this evolve from "the other side" I would tend to agree, and can also state that with many of the "career" criminals (as opposed to the gangs who REALLY do not give a [insert favorite expletive] ) -that a strong motivation is the efficiency of the (Police) Armed Response Units at shooting people involved in firearms crimes dead.
 
Nessie said:
Then throw Germany into the mix, a well armed civilian population (30.3 guns per 100 people) and the police hardly ever shoot anyone, they used 85 bullets in 2011.
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The UK figures are here:

2001/2002 ........11

2002/2003 ........10

2003/2004 .........4

2004/2005 .........5

2005/2006 .........9

2006/2007 .........3

2007/2008 .........7

2008/2009 .........5

2009/2010 .........6


Mike
 
MikeG said:
The UK figures are here:

2004/2005 .........5

2005/2006 .........9
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The UK police used 11 bullets to shoot Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005. I think that source is about something other than bullets used.

Ranb
 
Yes, you're right. It appears to be shooting incidents, rather than bullets.
 
I've gone to the source figures, which are this series of Home Office annual reports.

This is the definition they use (2011, relating to figures for 2009-2010):

The Police discharged a conventional firearm in 6 incidents (up from 5 incidents in
2008-09).
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Sorry for the woolliness of my previous posting.
 
Information Analyst said:
There was an interesting piece of Home Office research a few years back that showed that many British criminals with access to firearms often chose either not to use them, or not to load them. Some would also chose a replica rather than a live firearm, even if one was available, depending on the crime they intended to commit.
Click to expand...

Founds it: Home Office Resrach Study 298

To be fair, it does draw some weird conclusions, but the basic information on offender behaviour is enlightening.
 
Moved off-topic posts to AAH.

This is not a general gun-control thread, please keep to the subject of Brits and handguns.

Thank you.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin
 
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