Poll: Should British Police be armed?

[Player 2]

http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/17/britain%E2%80%99s-criminal-utopia/?s-criminal-utopia/

Here's one opinion.

The author of that article is a moron who has no idea what he's talking about; most of what he wrote is untrue, and the rest is fear mongering bullshit wrapped in half-truths.

 

[The Man With the Soap]

I voted no because I don't believe in arming anyone. No one should have the power to kill someone. Not even police. It probably reduces crime, but it could increase anger at police and authorities and incite more violence.

I say give them knives. It takes guts, passion, and drive to kill someone with a knife. I figure if they can do that, then there must be a good reason for it. Otherwise they'll have to figure something else out.

If police have guns, they can kill people and get away with it. They can injure people and get away with it. "In the name of the law". I don't even trust the law itself. I don't want it to be able to shoot me if I don't agree with it.

You realize that often times, the criminals that the police go after are better armed than they are, right?

 

[TStormer]

When you see cops charging an innocent crowd on horseback, when you see a cop pulling a guy out of a wheelchair and when you see the hoofprint of one of their fucking bestial mounts on your mate's steel toecap boots in a fucking peaceful protest, you know that those bastards don't need guns.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

As an American, and therefore born gun-lover, if stereotypes are to be believed, I vote no. See, in the US of A, police need guns because criminals have easy access to guns, and the police being unarmed would leave them at a disadvantage. Over in the UK, the criminals are not armed, so why the hell do the police need guns? So they can not shoot anybody, since they are pretty much never going to have the right to use lethal force? After all, most cases in the US of lethal force being authorized are the police either having a suspect aim at them with a gun, or appear to be reaching for a gun. Take away the gun, and you have an unauthorized shooting.

Tasers, on the other hand, make sense. If you've got a suspect charging you with a knife, you want to have some way to subdue him quickly. But a gun is not necessary, given UK gun laws.

 

[twistedmic]

I've got a friend who looks a typical metal-head and he almost had his prescription pills, his inhaler, and even his Epipen taken away from him because the officer just assumed it was some incredibly well-hidden drugs. My friend refused to hand over the items, since he is massively asthmatic and requires his medication on him at all times. The officer tried yelling, threatening arrest, but my friend stood his ground until she eventually dawdled away when another office came as 'back-up'.

Did your friend explain that he was highly asthmatic and he needed his medication on hand to prevent serious health problems, or did he just simply refuse to hand over the medication? If he did explain the situation and the cop was still yelling at him and threatening arrest, then the cop was a prick. If he didn't bother explaining, then the cop had reasonable doubt.
Also, did you friend have proof that the medication was his (i.e. his name printed on the labels and photo i.d., prescription cards etc?)?

 

[Jodah]

Nope. It works for them for the most part being unarmed. That being said it isn't the right answer for all police forces. If the US police forces were suddenly unarmed there would be rioting in the streets. English police are used to it, Americans are not.

 

[manaman]

Tasers, possibly. Proper guns, no. We have substantially less violent crime than the US, and I'd like to keep it like that.

Eh, the UK has more violent crime then South Africa. We are talking orders of magnitude bigger then the US. Enough so that different crime reporting statistics, and justice systems can't make up the entirety of the difference. About the only statistics the US can be seen as truly ahead on are gun crime (as a subset of total crime) and homicides. Even then the vast majority of those come from specific small socioeconomic groups around the country. In other words, it's a tiny percentage of the population committing the vast majority of those crimes, and in only specific areas. You are far safer walking down the streets in most US cities then are are in most UK cities.

 

[claymoreguy18]

Yes. Because if its a guy with a gun vs. a guy without a gun most of the time the guy with the gun will win. So if a robber has a gun and the policeman (or woman) does not then chances are the officer will lose.
It sucks but it often doesn't matter who is actually right and who is actually wrong when you have the gun then you are always right. period.
Then again I'm an American so maybe I'm a little biased.

 

[manaman]

Tasers, possibly. Proper guns, no. We have substantially less violent crime than the US, and I'd like to keep it like that.

Eh, the UK has more violent crime then South Africa. We are talking orders of magnitude bigger then the US. Enough so that different crime reporting statistics, and justice systems can't make up the entirety of the difference. About the only statistics the US can be seen as truly ahead on are gun crime (as a subset of total crime) and homicides. Even then the vast majority of those come from specific small socioeconomic groups around the country. In other words, it's a tiny percentage of the population committing the vast majority of those crimes, and in only specific areas. You are far safer walking down the streets in most US cities then are are in most UK cities.

thats got to do with urban sprawl and population density more than anything else.

The US and the UK have pretty close to the same (US 82% UK 80%) population living in urban areas. Actual city density is closer still with the UK in a slight lead. The only real difference is that the cities and urban areas are simply closer together in the UK.

 

[alrekr]

I think there should be special layer of the police that are allowed to have guns, but the every day police officer should not.

T

There already is; its called the armed response unit. Here in the UK if some nutter has a gun they call these chaps in. Also police men at likely terroist targets (government buildings, airports etc..) also tend to carry guns.

 

[alrekr]

a criminal thinks he'll get shot, he'll avoid the crime that could get him shot.

Most people who commit crimes think they will get away with it and do not think about what the police might do or what the law courts will do.
If police carried guns more often it would encourage criminals to pack heat and then we'd have an arms race.

The police here do good job without guns. If a situation happens in which guns are needed; armed response units are called in.

 

[omega 616]

No 'cos I bet it would increase deaths from things like a man pulling his wallet out or something, which I have heard of before.

I think it would increase deaths from over zealous/cavalier cops with itchy trigger fingers.

Can I remind people of the cause of our recent riots? A cop shooting a person.

If police need guns they can call in a specialist team.

I find it disturbing that there's so many pacifist hippies who don't think anyone should be armed. Like that massacre a while back, the reason it took so long was because the cops had to go get permission to go to the armory and gear up.
Second Amendment, fuck yeah!

I think it's disturbing the amount of aggressive people who need a safety blanket to feel safe while walking around. What next your all going to be donning full riot gear, why not just go the "surrogate" film route and build robots to live for you.

Could the massacre your talking about have happened if the ability to get guns was made harder? In the end people are going to kill if they want to dishing out guns like free money isn't the way to make people safer.

 

[bootz]

Guns for cops are a bad idea.
In the states where I live they pull it out and point it at you just for speeding or running a stop sign. They are very over used for no purpose.

 

[manaman]

Tasers, possibly. Proper guns, no. We have substantially less violent crime than the US, and I'd like to keep it like that.

Eh, the UK has more violent crime then South Africa. We are talking orders of magnitude bigger then the US. Enough so that different crime reporting statistics, and justice systems can't make up the entirety of the difference. About the only statistics the US can be seen as truly ahead on are gun crime (as a subset of total crime) and homicides. Even then the vast majority of those come from specific small socioeconomic groups around the country. In other words, it's a tiny percentage of the population committing the vast majority of those crimes, and in only specific areas. You are far safer walking down the streets in most US cities then are are in most UK cities.

thats got to do with urban sprawl and population density more than anything else.

The US and the UK have pretty close to the same (US 82% UK 80%) population living in urban areas. Actual city density is closer still with the UK in a slight lead. The only real difference is that the cities and urban areas are simply closer together in the UK.

I was reffering more to the face that in suburbia in the uk houses are right next to each other, so the unsocial types have an easier time of getting a hold of each other (yes sadly even our middle class produces thuggish offspring) from the little time i spent in small town america people were far more spread out and such grouping together (at least from my perspective) would seem to be less common.

And yes our population densities may be close BUT this only down to the hugely high density the us have in inner city areas, whereas we just have quite high all over.

The funny thing is, the inner city density is actually higher in the UK then the US. A higher percentage of your population actually lives in your cities then the US. While the US has a higher urban population (which includes suburbia, smaller towns linked to a larger area). Seattle is a great example of this. The entire I5 corridor (which is the area around interstate 5) between Tacoma and Seattle is populated. 3.4 million people live in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area, while only 600k live in Seattle and only 200k live in Tacoma, with other scattered towns between 30k and 80k. Most live in smaller towns that blur together into one large metropolitan area.

I will grant you that overall across the entire UK the population density per square kilometer is far higher then in the US, again this has to do with the incredible distances between metro areas in the US.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/USA-Urban-Areas.svg This link will take you to a map that will show you exactly how spread out the densely populated areas are in the US. Open with caution it's quite substantial.

I highly doubt that proximity of houses does anything to increase crime, when it actually tends to have the opposite effect. Over here houses are hit when it's rare to find a burglary in an apartment complex or town home complex, even in bad areas. There are just to many people around.

 

[Rex Fallout]

Shouldn't have outlawed guns in the first place.