Quote Originally Posted by fetishdj View Post

As for the police... It used to be the case in this country that the first time you saw a gun of any form was when you travelled abroad to somewhere like Spain where the police are armed as a matter of course - I remember being astounded at the age of 10 by Spainish police carrying pistols. The last time I went on holiday, I saw several police officers in the UK airport carrying machine guns (not sure what sort but they were similar to the ones carried by infantry) as well as pistols. This was not an unusual thing, either - it was not after a major terrorist attack (we travelled not long after the twin towers thing and there were a lot more armed police then) and as far as we knew there had been no alert - they were just normal police officers walking a beat inside an airport.
One other point I would like to make about the British police carrying firearms; and it is that in the short time they have done so they have carried out far too many mistakes. There have been several times that more than one officer has fired at a supposed gunman, and when it has been one firearms expert there has been more than one shot fired, proving yet again overkill, and trigger happy police.

I was out in Belfast with the Special Forces; we were carrying at the time Belgian 7.62 FNs. They were more powerful than most assault rifles that the armies of the world have now. If you could see and aim that far with the naked eye, this weapon had the killing range of 5 miles. Put 6 people 6feet apart and with one shot you would kill them all, it would go through a half inch of steel at 100 yards and 6 feet of packed sand. I like others in my section and battalion kept my rifle loaded but ready at a seconds notice. We had no need to ask for permission to shoot, it was written in black on a yellow card for us to read, and it was in our pockets at all times. I cannot remember a time when we abused the card and fired the weapon without being fired at first, and the reason was, that weapon was part of us, we trained with it and we slept with it, and we respected the firepower we held in our hands.

The police however don’t have this luxury, and are a very unstable to be using a firearm, unless you have a certain mentality in the army, you will not get to hold a position of responsibility with a firearm.

Regards ian2411