Do you really want a couple of dozen panicky commuters blasting away in a cross-fire? Sounds like a bad thing to me.
The guys who killed todays' creep absolutely knew what they were doing. They closed with him, grappled and dropped him, two of them held him down so their mate could empty a clip into him downwards, to avoid injuring innocent commuters.
"Do you really want a couple of dozen panicky commuters blasting away in a cross-fire"
That's the bugaboo antigunners always raise when US states consider gun permit reform to allow their citizens to be armed...the specter of waves of wild crossfires and bloodbaths in the streets simply never materialized in those states [now over 3/4 of US states] for a simple reason...its quite QUICK and EASY to train citizens to be responsible gun carriers well able to defend themselves and their communities, easier than teaching them to drive actually and just as I wouldnt want untrained people driving deadly weapons I wouldnt want untrained people carrying them...but that's not hard to solve.
But I dont want to seem like a political opportunist seizing on 'bad news' to push another issue like the apologists who seized on 7/7 to attack Bush and Blair...someones post on another thread made me think of this point now, but I'm just glad that today there was SOMEONE armed and on the scene to prevent todays events from becoming an even greater tragedy...lets just Hope that there is ALWAYS an ARMED bobby at the right place at the right time to protect defenceless Brits like there fortunately was today.
In Seattle we had an amusing incident where a police care was stolen by someone wearing a fake police uniform. Two "real" police cars found each other shortly thereafter involved in a minor fender-bender and the occupents of each car "assumed" the other was the stolen police car with "fake cops." The shootout that followed involved something like the exchange of over 39 handgun rounds.
There were no injuries!
A question for you....Would you feel safe being protected by armed police like these, or would you feel safer with someone who regularly goes to a gun range to practice his pistol shooting skills.
At the range I go to, there are some police officer that train there. After this incident, I talked to the rangemaster and he told me that most police officers don't get much range practice time in each year. They are more worried about keeping up with the latest changes in laws and dept. policies, than honing their shooting skills.