Quote Originally Posted by ian 2411 View Post
Bullshit, it was a police whitewash, i knew right from day one what the verdict would be ...
Just think of how much public money would have been saved if only the Government had thought of asking you first ...

I agree with your sentiment that the police, generally, are not adequately trained to handle firearms, but isn't that why individual policemen who do carry weapons have to pass a fairly rigorous training programme? I wouldn't expect it to be as thorough as the training given to members of the Special Forces, because they wouldn't be likely to have to use guns with the power you described your own weapon as having: most British constables have never been to Ulster and would have no need for such arms, even in a shoot-out with a bunch of bank robbers. Besides, I seem to remember the RUC was routinely armed as it had to deal with various republican movements from tme to time, and I imagine their firearm skills were as good as any.

I think the comparison between the gun handling skills of the British police with the standards expected from the Special Forces is not at all enlightening. There is a world of difference between dealing with a junkie threatening to blow out the brains of a hostage, and a hardened terrorist with 30 years' experience of ambushing and bombing British soldiers. Perhaps our American friends can tell us if they would expect a member of the NYPD to be able to handle some of the US Army's most powerful weapons as proficiently as someone in Delta Force.

I was reminded of something I was told about the Isle of Man's police force. It may be true; it's probably not, but it's amusing anyway. It seems the IoM's gun laws are pretty lax, and as a result, the police force there decided it needed an arsenal in case of need. Because the island is extremely wealthy, it was able to lash out an enormous sum of money to buy the weapons it wanted, and it duly took delivery of a mind-boggling array of weaponry. It was then realised that there was no-one on the whole force who was capable of using the weapons, or who was authorised to do so, and so, if it is necessary to ever issue weapons to deal with an "incident" they have to call a policeman from Manchester over to supervise the issue and use of the guns!!!!