Britain Hunts Terrorists with Unarmed Police

No, you were asking me if I would "ever" carry a gun for protection. Saying that I would *never* do something is a bit extreme-- I was just thinking about why I might need to carry.

Personally I think that insisting that one needs to carry a firearm in the modern United states is cowardly.

I live with my family in a busy, noisy, gritty, lively and diverse urban area and I have never felt the need to shoot anyone.

It is not so much the need to shoot someone which motivates the true second amendment perverting crackpot--it is the cherished hope that the opportunity will arise . . .

Can't hardly respond to that without being a second amendment perverting crackpot, huh?

Setanta, do you have a cherished hope of having a flat tire?

No. I've done it.

How many of you know lonely, isolated places where it may take law enforcement fifteen to twenty or more minutes to respond? Or not at all?

How many of you are business owners or celebrities or executives that attract a lot of unwanted attention?

Or maybe a LEO or former LEO who put away lots of bad guys who have been let out of the system?

That's definitely an "if the shoe fits" set-up, and i didn't really expect anyone to rise to the bait. My reference is in fact, to too many people whom i have known who trumpet their gun rights, show off their guns in the parking lot with much looking over their shoulder and hushed conversation, and talk at length about how nobody is going to take them down. The gun owners i've known with long experience of firearms and a good knowlege of their care and safe handling have always seemed to me to reasonable individuals. The ranters are the ones whom i believe cherish a secret desire to shoot someone, anyone . . . and i attribute that to an unrealistic point of view and a complete ignorance of the likely consequences.

And i'm not falling for your flat tire ploy any more than you were willing to rise to my bait.

Set, you only know me from your online experience. Few others here at A2K are willing to take on the cause as I've done, but I've been a part of the Abuzz/A2K community for years and I'm not going to go crawl under a rock.

If that makes me a ranter so be it. I have no desire to kill anything other than food.

You know the site claims to be an information sharing site, which it is to some extent, but it thrives on controversy. Do you really think anyone would read my threads if all I did was post about firearm safety?

F--k that.

Why have you assumed that the characterization was directed at you?

Uh, maybe because it's my thread?

Just a suggestion. The main thrust of the thread has been sorted out. The police in England and Wales are not going unarmed after terrorists.

Now, about having a firearm for personal protection. That would be an interesting thread of itself.

How much did you pay for it?

Hardly "worth" a response.

Like I said, they only tried it once. Mutiny can be ugly.

No. They've been dealing with terrorist for many years. Remember they have been dealing with the IRA. In fact you can probably go back to the Siege of Sydney Street in east London in 1911. The police were armed in that instance although the Scots Guards were called as backup.

It's simply wrong to say that the police in the UK (leave aside the RUC/PSNI) are "unarmed". They're not. True, uniform general duties police on routine patrol are not armed - but rest assured that their various specialist units are not only armed, they're extremely well trained and equipped.

Well, when I've been to England and Scotland for the first times, both families I stayed with had friends who where members of the armed police forces - that's 42 year back now.

When Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act was passed in 1829, the memory of "Peterloo" was still very fresh in everyone's minds. In August, 1819, the Manchester Yoemanry were sent to "quell" a mass meeting at which speakers demanded parliamentary reform. The meeting was held at St. Peter's Fields near Manchester, and the resultant massacre (eleven dead, more than 400 wounded, including more than one hundred women and children, charged by mounted men weilding sabres) became known as the "Peterloo Massacre," an intentional slur against the archconservative, the Duke of Wellington.

It was Wellington's conservative government which passed the Metropolitan Police Act, and Peel and many others insisted that the police go among the people unarmed, precisely because of the resentment which lingered a decade later. Typcial conservative response, though--give us more police. The subsequent government of Lord Gray passed parliamentary reform--and they gave a committee of Tories (conservatives) the job of making the list of boroughs to be eliminated or reformed--a brillian political move. The Reform Act of 1832 should hardly be seen as a radical move, though--less than 15% of adult males (which is to say less than 6% of the total population) got the vote.

Peel's plan to make the police less threatening by sending them out on the beat unarmed has workded marvelously well in England, and ought to be a lesson to other nations. By the way, because it was the brain-child of Robert Peel, the English call them Bobbies, and the Irish call them Peelers.

I've spent less than a minute reading news on this shooting and may have it wrong, but I think he was running because they were plainclothes officers.

I think the police in question looked very armed indeed.

They had masks and such on.

They were, as I understand it, anti-terror police.

Or were the photos just those of the police who got to the scene later?


I suspect the poor damn Brazilian dude just utterly panicked.

What I do find interesting is that Peel eventually got the New Police formed in 1829 but the Royal Irish Constabulary, a form of gendarmerie, had been operating in Ireland from 1816 and they were armed. Peel rejected this for England and Wales as the RIC was essentially a gendarmerie and not a civil police force.