Specifically in London the regular police are not armed. Armed police patrol the city in cars - if you're in the city you can identify these cars as they have a big yellow spot on the windows and there is an officer in the back seat. The aim is to be able to respond to a request within 8 minutes.
During the London bridge attack the attackers were shot dead by armed police 9 minutes after the first call to the police.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2017 https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Now, do some division. That's ~1 assault on a LEO per 2990 people in the US and ~1 assault on a LEO per 2100 people in the UK.
So assaults on LEO per capita are 26% greater in the UK.
Of course, it is also important to look at the number of LEOs in each state (in the sense of country, not US state).
From [0] there are ~686000 LEO in the US, or 1 per 479 people. From [1], there are ~123000 LEO in the UK, or 1 per 512 people.
So there are 6% fewer LEO per capita in the UK than the US, but the assaults on LEOs happen 26% more often per capita.
So how is it more dangerous in the US again?
[Edit: forgot sources! my bad.]
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enf... Actually, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detect... suggests 808,000 LEO in the US, which makes the per-capita LEO even higher in the US. Population data is hard.
Of those assaults, what impact did the police officer's gun have on the situation?
You can imagine an example where the gun is an asset - for example if the officer encounters an ongoing potentially deadly assault and then can shoot the perpetrator.
But I feel like more often the gun is a liability, an unarmed person is held at gunpoint and becomes violent - the police officer is left with the option of shooting the person or letting them get away. If they were using a batton/cs spray/taser (options available to regular British police) they then have many more options available to them.
(this feels off to me.. am I doing my math wrong?)
Recently they've been sneakily expanding the use of armed police though. In Dublin, I see more and more cars marked "Armed Response Unit" which have regular cops with guns. And just last week a detective was shot and killed with his own gun while doing a traffic stop. There's been a massive PR blitz about how good a guy this cop was, but zero discussion about why the duties of armed police have now been extended to include road traffic policing. I suspect it's planned to arm more and more of them and I wouldn't be surprised if the British followed the same slippery slope.
Have to agree, so, that a gun not carried cannot be used.
Just out of curiosity, is police violence and discrimination a problem in Ireland? Outside of Northern Ireland, off course.
They can own rocket launchers the same way they can own private jets. They're comparatively rare, expensive as hell, and utterly unrealistic for the average person. It's a bad analogy.
Meanwhile, regular long-arm firearms and handguns are insanely common in the US, comparatively cheap, and often very practical to carry or store in vehicles. The US has a crazy level of per capita gun ownership, like 120 guns for every 100 people. Gun ownership isn't rare, and disarmed police are going to get killed haggling after heavily armed civilians.
I suppose it could work if 95% of the police were engaged in something other than apprehending violent criminals...
I would be surprised if apprehending violent criminals was more that 5% of the job, personally. Wouldn't you?
To the downvoters; it is your right to do so, but think about it - Police are on patrol, taking reports of crimes that happened previously, they guard things, they help keep order at sporting events, they're on hand for political events. They're being traffic cops, white collar cops, they appear in court, all sorts of activities. And there's paperwork.
I would be very surprised if at any one time more than 5% of cops, or for a cop on average, more than 5% of their time was directly "apprehending violent criminals". It's important they do so, of course.
https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard...
Watch this video. The cops don't see a gun, they think he has one because of the call, but they don't see one. The minute his hand goes towards his waste, they blast him...
https://www.abqjournal.com/1380152/apd-man-shot-by-officers-...
[murder suspect] + [doesn't fight] = [life in prison], [no chance of escaping]
[murder suspect] + [does fight] = [life in prison], [non-zero chance of escaping]
This is actually a reason we might want to reduce sentences for some crimes. 'Tough on crime' laws make criminals more brazen.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4700838/#!po=19...
Edit: It looks like the non-fatal firearm injury rate for officers is actually 23.6 per 100k. I had the wrong number in the denominator because not all police stations responded to the FBI survey.
Trying to shove a police officer and miss? Assault. Stepping on their shoe while being arrested? Battery, and also probably assault. Spitting on a police officer? Battery, and probably aggravated assault.
It's very misleading to claim that 10% of police officers were assaulted in 2018. That might be true in a strict legal sense, but most of them probably walked away from their "assault" without so much as a bruise.
This would only seem relevant if your knowledge of weapons came from movies or video games where "bigger = better".
If I know you don't have a gun because you're one of these unarmed cops, I can completely dominate the situation. I can make you stand on one leg and do a recital.
> By analogy, people are allowed to own rocket launchers as well (it's true!) but that doesn't mean every beat cop should carry one.
Rocket launchers are not anti-personnel weapons and no ordinary criminal carries them or would be expected to carry them. The best weapon to neutralize a threat wielding a rocket launcher is not another rocket launcher, it's a rifle.
Should we arrive at the situation where criminals routinely arrive in armored personnel carriers or tanks, then we can talk about arming the police with rocket launchers.
You're no threat whatsoever. You have no power in the situation, you can't get it under control, mitigate the threat, and so on.