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> He added that it would be "a very sad day" for policing if armed troops were being forced to step in to help.

Personally I see it as a very sad thing that it's required to have so many armed police in the first place. I don't know the solution but it seems like addressing/ focusing more on the underlining cause would be a good place to start.

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This blew me away:

"According to Home Office figures, between March 2022 and March 2023 there were 18,395 firearms operations in England and Wales - the Met Police accounted for 20% of these. In that time, there were only 10 incidents across England and Wales when an officer opened fire at a person, the figures show."

Compare that with 48 just for NYC in 2022: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/firearm...

The context is that guns are much harder to come by in the UK and as such the armed police in the UK are much less likely to be met by an armed individual. So you would expect there to be far fewer times where they were actually required to open fire.

Might the context not be that armed police in the UK are only used for especially significant incidents and that these may or may not be determined solely on the likelihood of possession of firearms by non-police?

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