Should Police carry Firearms?

I do think the police should be armed as they are trained in using at at certain situations and are expecting to solve issues where others might be armed too.

The Bobby (even though I live in a different country) is not outdated either. What I do think is that we live in a period of too much paperwork and a lack of respect for authority.

Cops should walk on the streets to uphold the law and I also think there should be better care of the neighbourhood. Who knows his policeman nowadays and which policeman knows you?

It used to be that the policeman knew what you were doing and who you were. That way you kinda had respect for each other, especially when it involved kids. They were scared because he or she would watch you and also tell your parents when needed. Now you see people act violent towards the police and they mostly do not do anything about it. I recently saw it in the centre of where I live. A guy cursing towards policemen and they just let him talk trash.

So I would say let the paperwork to typists and put policemen back on the streets so they can do what they need to be doing. And let them be more aggressive in a good way (no violence or anything just more dominant)

A good topic this let me add my views
i dont think our police our outdated but i do believe that they are held up by the red tape and paperwork which means less time on the streets which in turn leads to less visible police.

Should our police be armed well again it should be the police that have that choice i know they have tazers and they have been used with good effect but what if an officer is faced with a man who pulls a gun what good is a tazer then so i would like to see the police armed on that point . As a visual deterent i think it works but if a hardened criminal has a gun he will use it desperate men take desperate chances .
I have not witnessed personally gun crime but someone very close to me has. We see it on the tv in the papers and its real its not like in the films the guy gets shot and runs away thats pure fantasy.
Myself and my partner have talked about this issue many times. As an ex serviceman he has seen gunshot wounds and the after effects that come with gun crime are no different than a wound or death in war. Regardless of how well a person is trained it has long lasting effects on the person using and killing or wounding another person .
So that brings another question would the officer be psychologically stable to be fit enough to carry a firearm ? And that remark is not meant to be detrimental to serving officers.

So in a nut shell we think yes to arming the uk police force the northern lireland police are armed and they are in the uk so why not ours. And give the police the back the authority they once had and prehaps the crime figures would fall .

All of the UK police force already carry a firearm of some description - their CS gas (or PARVA depending on what is being used in their county)

Every force has specialist Armed Response Officers and I must say that it works fine in Gloucester where I am a serving police officer. Whilst it is possible to come across an incident or to be deployed to an incident and then be faced with a firearm weilding nut case, it is unlikely.

We reply on information and respond to that information. If there was ever any doubt as to whether a firearm is involved then the specialist units will be utilised accordingly. I would imagine that these specialist units are larger in areas where there is more gun crime (Met for example).

It won't be long before Tasers are given to front line officers instead of CS/Parva because did you know that some people are immune to the effects of the Gas...not an ideal situation if you are relying on that gas to incapacitate the offender enough to restrain...

The reason most officers will turn a blind eye to being cursed at is because the CPS (crown prosecution service) rarely support prosecution for this type of offence. And unless someone is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to another member of the public, there is no offence to arrest or deal with that person for. And the scummy side of the public know that only too well.

I guess we also have to look further afield, USA for instance.

Has the presence of armed police deterred firearm offences? Unless you live in the stone age, and judging my what we see in the media, the answer seems to be No.

If firearms were to be issued to the police as a standard " tool ", imagine the training that would be needed. Not all officers i imagine would feel comfortable carry a gun, let alone using it. Police have to respond on an instinct, and gut reaction, and we all know innocent people have been harmed.

Also, what about police scuffles? I for one would be afraid of the weapon being grabbed and used against me, after all, from a criminals point of view, desperate time call for desperate measures.

i for one think the police should be allowed to arm themselves alot better as the amount of crime going on at the moment is getting totally out of hand, personally i wouldn't feel comfortable carrying a gun let alone using one. we do need to see the police as people that are there to help and protect us at the end of the day but it all comes down to that favourite saying desperate times call for desperate measures a person that feels threatened will stop at nothing and wont think about what there doing until its to late

Our Police Force should be armed and strengthened (as in numbers) We need to have more policemen on the streets of britain patroling and not riding around in panda cars.

They should be given more powers when arresting the criminals and not have loads of paperwork when they arrest individuals. They should take them to the nick and let the duty custody sergeant do the rest. Now we have Dna there is a 100% less chance of some one being wrongly convicted, so it's about time we had the death penalty back.

This would be a deterrant to a large number of people, but you will always get the hard liners who just don't give a damn and it's important for these criminals to be dealt with acdcordingly. The more policemen on the street less crime and the public would have more confidence in the police and feel much more safter to go out.