Guns of Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham: routine armed patrols

[Roadkill]

It might work, if the patrols of strapped rozzers are comprehensive enough to scare thugs to keep their pistols hidden.

Oh it'll scare people into keeping guns hidden alright - but only for as long as the armed deployments last and only in their immediate area. Like most crackdowns, all it will achieve is to move the problem around, more or less temporarily.

It would be better if law-abiding people were allowed to carry concealed weapons, as they are in that notoriously crime-ridden state Vermont. But this opinion is heretical, despite the fact that it rests on identical logic to that used to arm the police. Fanatical gun-haters like Ms McCartney have finally noticed this.

Best of all would be if people were free to carry weapons but felt no need to, as used to be the case in notoriously gun-ridden Edwardian Britain. For that to happen, armed criminals would have to fear the consequences of committing murder. But we refuse to hang murderers, so must instead impose the useless liberal alternative to the death penalty, gun control. Or rather, "law-abiding control", as that's the only people it affects.

I don't believe that concealed-carry laws would achieve anything other than more fights escalating into shoot-outs, frankly. I'm well aware that there are societies with such laws, very high rates of gun ownership and very low crime rates, but the reasons for that are in large measure social, cultural and economic, as are the reasons for some societies with high gun ownership and the rest being very violent. You are quite right to suggest that it's silly to blame guns for the actions of the people who fire them, but the actions of those people are conditioned by the societies in which they live. My (rather pessimistic) assessment of British society is that mass carrying of firearms would lead to them being used far more than they are now, and would not effect a significant reduction in crime.

I'm not at all convinced by your neat suggestion that gun control is an alternative to the death penalty. The motives for it are IMO far more complex than that. It goes without saying that I don't buy the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent either - but let's not go there...

Finally, from 1870 you had to have a licence to carry a firearm in the street, so it's not accurate to say that people were free to carry weapons in late Victorian/Edwardian times. Also, comparisons between then and now should be qualified with the fact that, although freely available, guns were considerably more expensive than they are now. Some criminals did carry and use them, but not usually the muggers and assorted other petty criminals, many of whose hands they'd almost certainly end up in today.

 

[likesfish]

 

[Corax]

Likesfish = NRA gunlova.

Noted.

 

[XR75]

 

[tarannau]

Likefish is a total knobber. The idea that we'll all be safer from criminals if a wider selection of guns is widely available is patently crackers, especially given the experience of the USA.

I don't wants cops carrying guns wondering around my estate either. If their finest were capable of such blatant misidentification and downright incompetent panic in the DeMenezes affair it doesn't bode well for machine gun toting cops keeping an even keel on patrol. It's hardly as this area hasn't got a history of cops bursting in and shooting the wrong people either.

 

[likesfish]

so only agents of the state or criminals should be allowed to have the means of self defense

never really got this.
The police can't or won't protect you if your attacked or theatened.
But you can't have the means to defend yourself.

 

[tarannau]

I've managed to defend myself plenty of times without the need of a gun thanks very much.

Your alarmist guff is misplaced and ludicrously removed from reality.

 

[Pickman's model]

I've managed to defend myself plenty of times without the need of a gun thanks very much.

good for you

 

[Pickman's model]

so only agents of the state or criminals should be allowed to have the means of self defense

there's no way you should ever be permitted near a firearm; you'd likely shoot yourself while cleaning it

 

[tendril]

Ms McCartney, you don't get "fewer guns" by giving criminals, who ignore the law, a total monopoly on carrying weapons. How are unarmed police supposed to protect people from armed criminals? Pavement jumping ahoy.

Her comment is indicative of the non-thought that surrounds this issue. Everyone is fixated on firearms and knives instead of the people who use them. It takes evil intent to kill someone. A conscientious person is safe with a weapon. A thug isn't safe with a toothpick. If you don't allow yourself to blame criminals, you end up demonising an inanimate object.

Some more of Ms McCartney's wisdom:-

"I feel strongly that the boisterous behaviour of school children on our buses should not be confused with criminal behaviour." [1]

"When I was out in Edmonton Green, I was interested to see that shoppers and members of the public passing through the [knife] search arches seemed reassured by the police presence and happy to participate. The whole exercise seemed very good natured."

I hope we get lots of armed police on the streets, hefting MP5s and swaggering in bloused combats and armour, holsters swinging from their hip. I hope they patrol regularly in Ms McCartney's neighbuorhood. Perhaps then the likes of Ms McCartney will, slowly, realise what sort of society their dimwitted criminal-appeasing policies have created.

Armed police never make a mistake do they

 

[pboi]

go out with a gun, hopefully you get shot

 

[bluestreak]

Tottenham is more of a state of mind...

I was in that sort of state of mind last weekend, just before being sectioned.

 

[XR75]

go out with a gun, hopefully you get shot

Put on a seatbelt, hopefully you crash.

 

[newbie]

I hope we get lots of armed police on the streets,

just aamoi does the name Cherry Groce mean anything to you?

If not you might like to read why her name will be resonating around Brixton as this news gets discussed.


but here's a surprise!!

 

[Old Gergl]

I was in that sort of state of mind last weekend, just before being sectioned.

You weren't sectioned.

 

[8den]

You weren't sectioned.

He thinks he was though mind.

Anyone who thinks a gun makes someone more secure should look at the amount of gun deaths from handguns kept in the house legally in the US compared to the UK

 

[XR75]

Look at all the deaths from people being run over in cars compared to countries where there are no cars.

Gun politics aside has the area where the armed police being deployed reached the kind of conditions where having them there is what's needed.

 

[Cid]

Look at all the deaths from people being run over in cars compared to countries where there are no cars.

Yes, that's precisely the point ffs...

 

[Stoat Boy]

As I understand things the Turkish/Kurdish gang war has been going on for the last couple of months and has involved some very nasty shootings ( one in particular was an execution carried out by a gunman on a motor bike who shot his target when he was in a car with his wife and kids). I would guess that the Police just want to up their presense to deal with more shootings because it seems like its escalating, especially given the link on the other page.

The South London patrols are in response to a massive increase in what are being called 'respect' shootings. These are not making the news because people are being deliberately shot in the legs thus making them far less likely to involve a death but are leading to an increasing amount of tit-for-tat revenge attacks and so on. I have heard that there have been as many as 70 or so of these this year.

Happy to be corrected on any of the above because its just what I have picked up on but I am guessing that the Met are wanting to send a message to both groups (not sure if the South London thing could be seen as a group per se) that they are upping their armed patrols in an attempt to at least try and speed up their response times given that the shootings seem to be happening in very definite post code areas.

 

[dat brown skin]

Can someone get me a gun, please? I always hear how easy they are to come by, but every pub I've ever asked around has come up with nada. I just really, really want a fucking gun - is that seriously too much to ask?

That's just media talk. A friend of mine the other night wanted to score some blow. After I told her I wouldn't know where to start, since I long lost contact with my partying buddies and their hook-ups, she took off and came back two hours later after driving around all of Hackney and Stokie, even went to some pubs. I hadn't laughed so much in such a long time. I gave her some wine and Valium to calm her down.

 

[dat brown skin]

He thinks he was though mind.

Anyone who thinks a gun makes someone more secure should look at the amount of gun deaths from handguns kept in the house legally in the US compared to the UK

I sometimes keep up with my old home town and feel safe in Hackney compared to this

 

[Cid]

I sometimes keep up with my old home town and feel safe in Hackney compared to this

Interesting (and pretty shocking).

 

[claphamboy]

Can someone get me a gun, please? I always hear how easy they are to come by, but every pub I've ever asked around has come up with nada. I just really, really want a fucking gun - is that seriously too much to ask?

check your PMs.

 

[PacificOcean]

check your PMs.

Oooh!

I want one too!

 

[JFirewall]

Brixton, why?

Maybe I stick to the High Street to much.

 

[Azrael]

I don't believe that concealed-carry laws would achieve anything other than more fights escalating into shoot-outs, frankly.

Or deter criminals from waving around guns in the first place. Even if the escalation argument held water, it should be a subject's right to decide. I don't think it does, though. The situation has already "escalated" when a crime is committed. Compliant victims embolden criminals. Perhaps Mr Robber adds a gun to his armoury. Why not? Makes his job even easier.

The "gun license" of the 1870s was available from a post office, no questions asked. Ditto its 1903 successor, which banned short-barelled pistols, but not much else. Modern gun control didn't arrive until the early Twenties, when Lloyd George panicked about evil Bolsheviks. Those who got one (and the law said police "shall issue") were still free to carry concealed weapons. It wasn't until the late 1940s that self-defence was deemed insufficient reason to grant a license, and concealed carry wasn't actually banned until the 1950s.

Roy Jenkins introduced more stringent "gun control" (in the form of shotgun laws) in response to anger at his abolition of hanging.

If guns are in the hands of petty criminals, it makes a right to bear arms (assumed to be a wacky cowboy notion today, but guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, 1689) all the more essential. The alternative is that victims of crime must place themselves at a criminal's non-existent mercy.

I agree that there's no simple answer. But that's exactly what people like Ms McCartney are peddling.

Armed police never make a mistake do they

And if I claimed we lived in a perfect world, you'd even have a point there. How should criminals be disarmed and deterred if the police don't carry guns?

just aamoi does the name Cherry Groce mean anything to you?

If not you might like to read why her name will be resonating around Brixton as this news gets discussed.


but here's a surprise!!

So how should the police deal with armed criminals?

 

[newbie]

I don't know but I do know that bursting in to the home of a middle aged lady and shooting her doesn't exactly "deal with armed criminals". The consequences of arming the police are far, far wider than some simplistic notion of dealing with criminals (who mostly shoot each other and ignore the rest of us anyway).

 

[dat brown skin]

check your PMs.

Can you hook me up too?

 

[detective-boy]

I don't know but I do know that bursting in to the home of a middle aged lady and shooting her doesn't exactly "deal with armed criminals".

You missed out why they were there in the first place ...

(or were you deliberately misrepresenting the situation ... )

 

[Jonti]

uhhh, the fact the cops were looking for Michael Groce, who at the time was a villain, and often armed, is well known.

All the same, bursting into his mum's home and shooting her didn't deal with any armed criminals at all; no more than the misidentification and panicky killing of JdM dealt with any jihadists.

Mistakes happen; these incidents were very serious mistakes. Surely we all accept that?