crumas2 said:
Perhaps you've confused police officers with security guards. Security guards are employed to protect people or property pro-actively. Police are employed to enforce the law after the fact, except in specific cases. Security guards are hired by rich/famous/political people to stand guard and prevent bodily injury or other crimes from being perpetrated on them. Companies hire security guards to protect the premises from criminal acts. This is different than police who primarily respond to crimes. Some police do patrol roads, etc., but this is designed to give them faster response time, not to allow them to "guard" the citizenry at large, which is entirely impractical. Only in specific instances are police "posted" at a facility/event/home, typically when the risk of criminal act is extremely high or could be catastrophic (witness to a mafia murder, political speech, rare/expensive museum exhibit, etc.). So, while I do not own a firearm, I am not opposed to someone else owning one for self defense, as police forces are not designed to protect the populace. As for Europe remaining safe without firearms, I believe the crime rates are lower due to cultural differences... we have some issues here in the US regarding how we raise our children, at least in my opinion. Also, the status in Europe may be changing... in the UK, where the police do not carry firearms, this has become a problem when dealing with Islamic terrorists. It wasn't that long ago that a terrorist act in the UK was responded to with firearms... yes, firearms... the police there knew that the terrorists would likely be carrying firearms, so they were forced to respond in kind to be effective. This threw the UK media into an uproar, but only a great fool comes to a gun fight carrying a knife. |
No, you aren't quite right about this. In the UK, the police don't carry firearms, quite right. But that's not always the case - armed response teams are trained and are used occassionally for situations such as terror threats. Day-to-day police don't get guns, but the police in every area have one trained armed response unit in case of emergencies. Also, the uproar in the UK over that situation wasn't that guns were used, it was that a 'terrorist' was shot dead by armed police in the tube, in London (the 'subway'), and it turned out that he was innocent.
I don't agree with guns, but both the UK and US are backwards in different ways. The UK's police should have guns, I think, and the US general population shouldn't.
