“Police chiefs will consider the possibility of offering a gun to every frontline police officer in England and Wales, to counter the threat of a marauding terrorist attack,” theguardian.com reports. “A discussion paper on the subject has been drawn up for the next meeting of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which wants to look at how to boost armed police numbers to deal with a crisis, following the atrocities in Manchester and London.”

Interestingly, the paper suggests relaxing the extensive training “armed response officers” undergo for armed British “bobbies” on the beat.

The paper also suggests that beat officers who are now unarmed would get about two weeks of training in how to use a handgun. That is much less training than the six weeks for fully qualified armed officers.

he beat officers would then get a day of refresher training and re-accreditation twice a year. The upside of this option is that police chiefs might get enough officers volunteering, and it would boost the number of officers who can handle a gun in a crisis more quickly than other options.

However, handguns cost £500 each, and training would further stretch resources, as officers would have to take time off to train.

[Note: Britain is a socialist state stretched to the financial breaking point by its spending on social services, such as pensions (£159b), social security (£112b) and the National Health Service (£146b).]

So how’s this idea — arming “front line” officers — going down amongst the rank and file?

In a recent survey of Met officers, the Metropolitan Police Federation found just over half said they would carry a gun routinely if asked to do so. One in 10 said they would quit rather than carry a firearm.

What does that tell you?

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42 COMMENTS

  1. What does that tell you?

    That Britain is on the way to arming the majority of it’s police officers.

  3. It’s cool that some would quit rather than carry, assuming they’re not blowing smoke. The UK is beyond help, it has decades more of bowl-circling to do before it can complete its life cycle as a crumbling empire. Look at Spain, they started losing momentum in the 16th century and have just leveled off recently, if ever. The ones sticking to the no-guns thing at least aren’t hypocrites.

  4. Now, what if the terrorists would be kind enough to start their atrocities within, let’s say, a block of an armed police unit. It’s the only sporting way to jihad, don’t you know. This higgeldy-piggeldy all-over-the-place nosense simply has to stop. So uncivilized.

    So. PR campaign, then? Much less expensive than those cursed guns … and these days we must be watching our pennies as well as our pounds! Quieter, too.

  5. Rather quit than manup?!? It tells me the chaps who bravely(and stupidly) fought 2 world wars are scarce. Pathetic…I sincerely don’t care. Better learn Arabic…

    • They’re more likely to scream the name of their soccer club at a terrorist than carry a gun? You remember those 1st unarmed cops who came on scene at the bridge and had to retreat because they weren’t equipped to take on the machete wielding jihadis? What do they think? They cowered in fear for their own lives and could do nothing while the people they were sworn to protect got butchered. Do they still hear the screams of the people getting slaughtered… This article should be under “this is what happens to a disarmed people”.

      • Even with a gun I can still see any Brit screaming the name of their soccer club at a terrorist just before capping him off, in good sporting fashion

    • @ FWW:

      For what it’s worth, I disagree with you that a willingness to bear arms is the be-all and end-all of “manning up”. It’s plenty ballsy to be an unarmed LEO who might potentially have to confront an armed criminal.

      The reluctance of British Police officers to arm up is strongly linked to the tendency for officer-involved shootings to result in a lengthy internal investigation and potentially career-ending consequences even if it was a legit shoot. That’s an institutional problem, but I would argue it doesn’t represent a lack of manliness on the part of the officers.

      We have a very different approach to policing in the UK (vs the States) and armed officers are regarded as an occasional and exceptional necessity, rather than the norm. That doesn’t mean our Police shirk their responsibilities or that they are less at risk than their (routinely armed) equivalents across the pond.

      • That approach to police work was effective when your country was populated with polite Englishmen of the Anglican Faith.

        That country no longer exits. Your nation has foolishly rejected the Faith that built it, and then allowed entrance to a massive flood of England hating Islamists.

        Mohammedians aren’t the same as Anglicans.

        Cheerio my good chap.

        • @ Owen:

          Fair point (although as a Brit it’s my firm belief that the situation is less dire than it’s often assumed to be by some readers here on TTAG).

          But it also doesn’t contradict my main point, in response to former water walker, that being unarmed under normal circumstances doesn’t somehow make our cops less manly – it just means they have different SOPs that may need to be reevaluated in light of evolving threats.

        • Gabriel –
          I agree with your main point. Being an unarmed police officer actually requires a good deal of courage. I certainly respect their courage (though the line between courage, and foolhardiness may be blurry).

          I certainly wouldn’t want that job.

      • Ive never been in a car crash where I needed my seat belt but I still wear a seatbelt. Ive never been in a house fire but I have sprinklers and alarms in my house. I’ve never had cancer but I have health insurance. Most cops (here or over there) will never shoot anybody, but a gun is a tool and it’s better to have and not need, than need and not have. If your society views it as some sort magic wand of death, where a cop would rather die, hide, or quit than use it to save life, then I am sorry for your people.

  7. I wonder how London’s elite firearms officers would fare in a head-to-head marksmanship competition with, say, the NYPD. Or imperial storm troopers.

    • Well, if they’re going to use Jawa and Sandcrawler target pictures, I’ll put $5 on the boys in white. Can’t hit the broad side of a star destroyer versus anything else, but they have Jawa and Sandcrawler targeting down cold.

    • Probably equal. Except London police often have SAS men attached. He might do better than NYPD.

  8. Terrorism is but the fringe of a movement already underway. That movement, cultural and population displacement, will supplant the western world in England, even if terrorism complete stops. There will come a point when terrorism–and therefore arms cops–aren’t needed because the cultural displacement will take place via elections and the legal process.

    • You make an interesting point. A couple of years ago a read an interesting scientific piece, published in Europe by a European atheist about the future of religion in Europe. He claimed from his observations, that Christianity in Western Europe was already dead, supplanted by atheism, but, ultimately, Islam was the future of Western Europe. He noted many philosophical and scientific points including nobody really enjoys atheism and that Islam would in fact look hopeful to masses of people who seemingly have no pourpose in existence. It wouldn’t just be the influx of islamists and refugees, but ultimately a human desire for faith. He also pointed out that ideas of humanity, wether faith or government based, weaken on their home terrorities and strengthen on the frontiers. (Think of socialism as an example. Dead in Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries, but flourishes in the west. Christianity is another one. Dead in the Middle East and Europe but alive and well in the Americas.) Europe is frontier for Islam and a home for atheism, leaving it ripe for Islamic conquest.

      • It’s pretty bad when you have to be forced to believe.

        There will never be enough cops around to protect the people, and that will be even worse if the rank and file decide to quite. Give the people back their right to defend themselves as many are starting to call for now… before the cattle cars begin loading at the station.

        As far as the rank and file cops go, anyone who quits rather than carry a weapon was not really in the profession because they wanted to make a change in society.

  11. The facts that gun carrying by cops DECLINED since 2009, plus that anyone had to consider more than 2 seconds to take this step shows that the Brits have lost their minds.

  12. If you want to see how bad British gun crime is, go to the Liverpool Echo, under gun crime….they have all the stories on gun crime and shootings in the country that banned guns…also check out London crime news on google…..I follow British crime news in order to post against anti-gunners…Britain, and Australia are their two go to countries for gun control..so showing how gun control has actually failed, by posting stories about the drive by shootings in Merseyside, England….helps knock down that myth.

  13. One in 10 said they would quit rather than carry a firearm.

    What does that tell you?

    It tells me the ranks need some weeding out.

  14. if the jihadists all used machetes they will be doing the disarming, dislegging and the disheading……..

  15. Brits have bent over backwards to recruit Muslims into their police ranks, because diversity. It might be useful to know which percentages of them approve of violent jihad and are willing to arm-up.

  16. Arming the police in UK? I called that a start. Arming the populace? Well, the majority of peasants (aka “citizens”) in Europe have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they would prefer the terrorists than arming the population, if given a choice. Even in places that have “armed police”, officers are afraid of drawing their weapons because of immediate sanctions, investigations, and potential indictments if, and when, they do so. Some armed police officers in Spain have been badly beaten while fully armed because they were afraid of sanctions. They never reached for their weapon.

  17. Quote from
    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/14/met-polices-decision-to-arm-a-further-600-officers-is-no-gamechanger

    “It has been a long-held belief in British policing that the unarmed British officer is among the safest in the world. As an often-quoted American police chief once put it: “If a New York cop was on duty in London, he would be in jail within a week, and if the British bobby was on duty in New York, he would be dead within a week.”

    “Safest” to whom? To the criminals/terrorists?

    To which I respond:
    What does that suppose to mean? Or better stated, WTF?

    The British public would not trust or accept armed police:
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/british-public-not-trust-armed-police

  18. We should just build a monument to remember them and then consider nuking the islamic caliphate of englandistan. You would probably get more terrorists and human right haters than with a nuke on pakistan or iran.

  19. England should furnish every police station with fainting couches so that bobbies will have some place to recover whenever they get the vapors from the very thought of carrying a gun.

  20. They will consider the idea? Good grief. I would have made a gun deal with Beretta or FN 72 hours of a attack.

  22. When will people finally stop acting as if the UK is the slightest bit relevant to people who value gun rights?

  23. I remember being a bit saddened seeing an armed Bobby outside Hyde Park. It was a pity to see the old order of unarmed police — and unarmed criminals — in a sort of gentlemen’s agreement, pass away because of the reality of the new order of violent, homicidal criminality.

  24. Why would they not? I live in the northeast US and carry conciled is a good thing as long as you are a responsible person. No law enforcement officers I know have an issue with it. I find it hard to believe that law enforcement agencies anywhere are unarmed.

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