To counter terror, Europe’s police reconsider their arms

Associated Press ^ | Jan 19, 2015 2:56 PM EST | Lori Hinnant

[Olog-hai]

One was a young policewoman, unarmed on the outskirts of Paris and felled by an assault rifle. Her partner, also without weapons, could do nothing to stop the gunman. Another was a first responder with a side arm, rushing to the Charlie Hebdo offices where a pair of masked men with high-powered weapons had opened fire on an editorial meeting. Among their primary targets: the armed police bodyguard inside the room.

With the deaths of the three French officers during three days of terror in the Paris region and the suggestion of a plot in Belgium to kill police, European law enforcement agencies are rethinking how—and how many—police should be armed.

Scotland Yard said Sunday it was increasing the deployment of officers allowed to carry firearms in Britain, where many cling to the image of the unarmed “bobby.” In Belgium, where officials say a terror network was plotting to attack police, officers are again permitted to take their service weapons home. …

[rktman]

Train at Frontsight? Hehehehehe!

[barmag25]

Try adding this one to the arsenal,

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Just a thought

[Olog-hai]

Sure; they’ll bring that in as soon as they get rid of the social market economy.

[BBell]

My Dad told me that when he was in Spain during the Franco years the police carried sub machine guns and that it was a very clean and orderly Country with a low crime rate.

[Olog-hai]

And none of the citizens carried guns, right?

[Redcitizen]

Hey Europe, now you see why we’re bitter clingers?

[BBell]

That I don’t know.

[Billthedrill]

"We don't want necessarily the arms that American police have. We need weapons that can respond," said Philippe Capon of French police union UNSA.

A police uniform is a target. That can't be helped. What can be helped is not sending a guy into a gunfight with a billy club and a whistle.

But here's the real issue: there are more citizens than cops. If they are armed citizens, terrorist punks can't count on a weapons-free killing zone. And that makes it safer for the cops as well. If you think of armed citizens as nothing but a threat you're a damned fool.

[Blue Jays]

Police patrolling around with machine guns does not sound like a happy and peaceful existence.
It sounds like an oppressive and simmering place that could erupt into a boil nearly instantly.

[BBell]

If you recall Spain had a nasty civil war not too many years before my Father was there and that when Franco eventually died there was a peaceful transformation from a police state to a democracy.

[MaxMax]

IN case you didn't know, just about Every patrol car has an AR-15 inside.

And about the Wild west theory, not going to happen. At least it did
not happen in America. All those predictions about gun fights in the streets
because of gun ownership, failed to evolve. The MSM certainly wished for it to
happen though.

[Blue Jays]

I do not wish for police to regularly patrol in armored personnel carriers, either.
If police can't walk the streets with a typical semi-automatic and three magazines (or revolver with speedloaders) it means there is an underlying problem.

[Veto!]

“Unarmed” and “Law Enforcement Officer” don’t really fit into the same sentence. What is the officer supposed to enforce the law WITH?

[buwaya]

When we lived in rural Spain in the 1960s the Guardia Civil (the rural police with the funny hats) carried Mauser rifles.
The submachine guns were carried in certain places like border crossings, airports and patrolling certain towns where trouble could be expected. There was some guerilla activity and terrorism from Basque nationalists.

[buwaya]

Spain post WWII was a notably peaceful place.
The Spanish have a history of banditry, but this was thoroughly suppressed in the late 19th century. Since then what crime there was seems to have been petty stuff usually blamed on the local gypsies. The Spanish are a rather sober people and rarely are troublesome drunks, unlike say the British.
These days there is more petty crime, probably, because of a lot of immigrants including Eastern European gypsies, but other than some hot spots (Barcelona is one), it still is a very safe place by any standards.

[BBell]

I will have to ask my Dad more about it. Details.

[MasterGunner01]

If the Europeans decide to rearm their police, then I hope they do a lot of marksmanship training. Here's an interesting contribution from Jeff Cooper's Commentaries, Vol. 1, No. 9 (September 1993):

“Family member Dr. Werner Weissenhofer reports from Vienna. It seems that a felon armed with a .357 revolver robbed a bank. As he left the bank, he was accosted by a policeman whom he murdered with one shot. Great excitement ensued, with the felon taking hostages and racing madly around from one store to another. When the forces of law and order had been mobilized and surrounded the goblin, a policeman volunteered to trade himself to the goblin for two hostages. This offer was accepted, at which time the felon fired at the policeman and seriously wounded him. The forces of law and order opened up with everything they had, which was mostly AUG and Glock fire. Shortly, the goblin killed himself with one round. He had fired three times and achieved three hits. The police, according to their official report, fired 1,261 rounds without drawing blood.

At one time, we used to refer to an event of this sort as a “Chinese Fire Drill.” Later we came to call if “Father's Day in Harlem.” After the interment of the Ayatollah Khomeini, we began to call it “An Iranian Funeral.” Now, I guess we can call it “A Viennese Bank Robbery.”

As I have often stated, if someone wants to shoot at me, I sure hope he does it on full-auto.”

[The KG9 Kid]

In London, the police who are authorized to carry firearms are almost always seen with long arms (carbines) and not sidearms (handguns).

I related a story here not long ago when I toured London and the guide mentioned that the police cars with the blaze orange stripe carried the 'Flying Squad' which meant they were armed, while at the same time telling our group that the average London policeman isn't armed like the cops are in America. I pointed out that all I've seen so far are these blaze orange cars and none of the traditional 'bobbies' walking around. The guide sort of hemmed and hawed and mentioned that London was under a heightened terror alert level and that is why armed police were out in force amongst the populace.

So we finally got in front of the US Embassy in Westminster and we saw all these London police walking around with Heckler and Koch MP5s. The guide pointed out that they're carrying 'machine guns'. I looked closer and saw that the Hk MP5s they carried all had the restricted '0-1' ('Safe', 'Fire') "FBI Lower" receiver which meant they weren't full auto machine guns but semi-automatic 9mm carbines without the capability for select-fire. This is how the American FBI issues the Hk MP5 to field agents when necessary, with the capability to fire one round per trigger pull only. I suppose that the London police adopted the same idea somehow.

Here's how they looked:

If you look closely, you can see how the London police armorers have put a wired castle nut bolt on the lower receiver so as to prohibit a policeman from swapping out the semiautomatic-only lower receiver with a full-auto lower receiver without authorization. I thought that was amusing. Anyway, I saw groups of London police walking all over the streets of London armed up like this. Piccadilly Square, the government area around 10 Downing Street near Parliament, etc. I saw more of them than the traditional unarmed police that wear stab-proof vests and the classic 'bobbie' helmet.

I got home and mentioned this to a gun group board I chat on and someone piped up and said the reason that this is so is because the London police are more comfortable with issuing carbines rather than pistols because the carbine has a more fearsome appearance, offers more accuracy over a pistol since it can be shouldered and mounted with red dot optical sights, and is not as easily lost, misplaced, or stolen as a handgun might be. So, overall: It looks tougher, shoots better, and is easier to account for than a pistol. Other than that, it doesn't perform any better or do anything different than what a holstered pistol does.

... but I guess that idea has since changed because you can see all the London police in the picture above are carrying holstered pistols.

[Begin]

Their hats look ridiculous.