BF2S Forums Should the police carry firearms?

Vilham wrote:

The kind that hardly has any gun crime, unlike one retarded country I can think of.

Oh noes! A United States basher!

We are so retarded that we carry guns.

UK people stop debating this. Americans just dont get it. Why? Because they live in America where homicide rates are 6x higher than ours and they feel guns are really cool.

Vilham wrote:

UK people stop debating this. Americans just dont get it. Why? Because they live in America where homicide rates are 6x higher than ours and they feel guns are really cool.

Such topics as these do not do well in an international forum.  Segregation is the key!!!

Vilham wrote:

UK people stop debating this. Americans just dont get it. Why? Because they live in America where homicide rates are 6x higher than ours and they feel guns are really cool.

...and because we have so many guns, not giving them to our cops is a horrible idea.  You're the one who doesn't get it, if you can't figure out that, once a population gains ready access to guns, you can't just make the weapons disappear.  You certainly can't keep law enforcement from having them.

To use a more extreme example, how effective do you think police would be in Johannesburg, South Africa, if they weren't allowed to carry guns?

Turquoise wrote:

Vilham wrote:

UK people stop debating this. Americans just dont get it. Why? Because they live in America where homicide rates are 6x higher than ours and they feel guns are really cool.

...and because we have so many guns, not giving them to our cops is a horrible idea.  You're the one who doesn't get it, if you can't figure out that, once a population gains ready access to guns, you can't just make the weapons disappear.  You certainly can't keep law enforcement from having them.

To use a more extreme example, how effective do you think police would be in Johannesburg, South Africa, if they weren't allowed to carry guns?

No I agree. Your whole point fails though. Im not telling Americans to do anything, you can live how you like, I really dont care. However all the Americans on this thread have so far pretty much said that the UK is stupid and should have police with guns. And yet our gun crime is none existent and our homicide rate is very low. Something your country cant claim is the same.

Our way is quite clearly the better way, so stop telling us to change to your way.

Last edited by Vilham (2007-12-08 08:16:24)

its simple

criminals carry guns.
so police should carry guns.

no matter how many laws you put against guns, criminals will always, always have them. forever.

by creating laws against guns, you are making pedestrians a better target for robbery/killing, because the criminals know the chances of the pedestrian pulling a gun, are slim.

and wouldn't you like to have an even playing field if your getting robbed by gunpoint?
i think so.

Americans hold our guns very dear to us.   It will not do any outsider well to talk of removing our firearms.  This is seen time and time again in these forums.

Turquoise wrote:

Vilham wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

...and because we have so many guns, not giving them to our cops is a horrible idea.  You're the one who doesn't get it, if you can't figure out that, once a population gains ready access to guns, you can't just make the weapons disappear.  You certainly can't keep law enforcement from having them.

To use a more extreme example, how effective do you think police would be in Johannesburg, South Africa, if they weren't allowed to carry guns?

No I agree. Your whole point fails though. Im not telling Americans to do anything, you can live how you like, I really dont care. However all the Americans on this thread have so far pretty much said that the UK is stupid and should have police with guns. And yet our gun crime is none existant and our homocide rate is very low. Something your country cant claim is the same.

Nonexistent?  Well, it might be nonexistent compared to ours, but this isn't nonexistent in a literal sense.

The rise in UK gun crime is a long term trend that is apparently unaffected by the state of UK firearms legislation.

Before the 1997 ban, handguns were only held by 0.1% of the population, and while the number of crimes involving firearms in England and Wales increased from 13,874 in 1998/99 to 24,070 in 2002/03, they remained relatively static at 24,094 in 2003/04, and have since fallen to 21,521 in 2005/06. The latter includes 3,275 crimes involving imitation firearms and 10,437 involving air weapons, compared to 566 and 8,665 respectively in 1998/99. Only those "firearms" positively identified as being imitations or air weapons (e.g. by being recovered by the police or by being fired) are classed as such, so the actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher. In 2005/06, 8,978 of the total of 21,521 firearms crimes (42%) were for criminal damage.

Since 1998, the number of people injured by firearms in England and Wales increased by 110%,[24] from 2,378 in 1998/99 to 5,001 in 2005/06. "Injury" in this context means by the use of the gun as a blunt instrument or as a threat, or by being shot. In 2005/06, 87% of such injuries were defined as "slight," which includes the use of firearms as a threat only. The number of homicides committed with firearms has remained between a range of 46 and 97 for the past decade, standing at 50 in 2005/06 (a fall from 75 the previous year). Between 1998/99 and 2005/06, there have been only two fatal shootings of police officers in England and Wales. Over the same period there were 107 non-fatal shootings of police officers - an average of just 9.7 per year.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politi … ed_Kingdom

Do you know why there are so many firearms offences, yet so few lethal ones....?

It's because offences involving BB guns or air rifles also count as gun crime in the UK.

Bertster7 wrote:

Do you know why there are so many firearms offences, yet so few lethal ones....?

It's because offences involving BB guns or air rifles also count as gun crime in the UK.

Point taken.  I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with your police not needing guns.  I just think you're blaming the weapons when culture is really what's to blame.

Vilham wrote:

Sorry Turquoise but I thought you were brighter than that. All those crimes you listed involved fake replica guns/bb guns/air guns/real guns. We have about 50-60 gun related deaths a year. Our population is 60 million... I would say thats none existent. In comparison to our total crime those gun related crimes account for something like 5% of our country's crime. Yet again, I would say thats pretty damn low/none existent considering most of those arent real guns being used in crime.

You really have a flair for condescension.  Where have I disagreed with you that you have less gun crime than us?

I'll say it again.  Culture is more to blame than weapons.  If weapons were the main problem, you'd have a lot more rifle shootings, since it's easier to get a hunting rifle in the U.K. than a handgun.

Bertster7 wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

Do you know why there are so many firearms offences, yet so few lethal ones....?

It's because offences involving BB guns or air rifles also count as gun crime in the UK.

Point taken.  I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with your police not needing guns.  I just think you're blaming the weapons when culture is really what's to blame.

I agree, to a point.

But I don't think it's anything to do with having a less violent culture. In many respects I would argue that the UK has a more violent culture in general than the US. It's about US gun culture, take the guns out of the equation and culture should shift to follow, although gun culture is so ingrained in American culture in general that removing guns almost altogether would be far more difficult than in most other western countries.

In the UK a lot of violent crime occurs, typically involving knives or brutal beatings with bottles/blunt objects/chainsaw chains.....    etc.
The UK is far from a peaceful utopia, but at least gun crime is one thing that is not a serious issue here.

Good points...  Here's something I'd like to know.  How much higher or lower is the overall violent crime rate in the U.K. as compared to the U.S.?  I'd be willing to bet that, even with the chavs you have other there, your violent crime (even not including gun-related ones here) is much lower than the rates here.  I'm not sure if you could find statistics that remove gun-related crimes from the equation.

Last edited by Turquoise (2007-12-08 08:46:33)

Turquoise wrote:

Bertster7 wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Point taken.  I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with your police not needing guns.  I just think you're blaming the weapons when culture is really what's to blame.

I agree, to a point.

But I don't think it's anything to do with having a less violent culture. In many respects I would argue that the UK has a more violent culture in general than the US. It's about US gun culture, take the guns out of the equation and culture should shift to follow, although gun culture is so ingrained in American culture in general that removing guns almost altogether would be far more difficult than in most other western countries.

In the UK a lot of violent crime occurs, typically involving knives or brutal beatings with bottles/blunt objects/chainsaw chains.....    etc.
The UK is far from a peaceful utopia, but at least gun crime is one thing that is not a serious issue here.

Good points...  Here's something I'd like to know.  How much higher or lower is the overall violent crime rate in the U.K. as compared to the U.S.?  I'd be willing to bet that, even with the chavs you have other there, your violent crime (even not including gun-related ones here) is much lower than the rates here.  I'm not sure if you could find statistics that remove gun-related crimes from the equation.

I don't think that is the case.

It's difficult to find properly representative figures, but 2.4 million violent crimes a year in the UK (recently - of which about 5000 a year involve real firearms) compared to about 1.5 million violent crimes a year recently in the US seem to show a much higher rate of violent crime in the UK. The definitions of violent crime in the UK and US do differ though and trawling through the statistics to get a bit more accuracy would take more time than I'm prepared to spend on it. But based on those very rough preliminary figures, I'd say the UK is at least as violent, if not more violent, a place as the US - but people don't die so often as result because we don't have guns over here.

The_Mac wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

The police faces stress situations everyday, and after all they are humans, and shit happens.  In the UK regular policemen don't carry firearms

Yeah, and then they get shot by thugs. Brilliant idea, you're a master!

Actually that's complete nonsense. I can't remember the last time a policeman was shot in Britain. It does happen once every few years, but I can't remember any incidents of it happening recently. Whereas in the US at least 50 police get shot dead a year - not favourable figures for backing up your argument.