In the land fomerly known as "Great" Britain...

[ELB]

My stalker was at the front door holding a gun.

...

I rang the emergency services. But soon the stalker was crashing into the back door as we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom and after a few minutes we could hear him inside the house. He was going from room to room looking for us and he had a bladed hammer to smash the door down.

...

I climbed out of the window. It's amazing how far you can jump when you have to.

Once I was down I ran out to the road expecting it to be like an American cop drama with a horseshoe of police cars ready to protect me. It wasn't.

The police were hanging back at the end of the road while they waited for armed officers to arrive.

So I ran to the house opposite and a stranger leaving for work led me inside to safety. ...

The stalker is in prison, for now.

[joe817]

It boggles my mind that ALL of Great Britain's police force are not armed. ESPECIALLY now days, where all of Western Europe is a battle ground for terrorists that have free reign over a defenseless populace.

[Abraham]

They've experienced massive Islamic Radical terrorism and still haven't completely armed up.

It does boggle the mind...

[pushpullpete]

I read somewhere that Great Britian has some VERY restrictive gun laws, similar to Japan. That said I agree with Abraham, it is strange to see unarmed police.

[Pariah3j]

Well I think Britain is working off the theory that if the citizens can't be armed with guns, neither should be the police. And of course we all know criminals follow weapon and gun laws, so they shouldn't have them either ... Wonder why this is proving to be a problem ?

[Tracker]

Exclusive: After Westgate, Interpol Chief Ponders 'Armed Citizenry'
By Josh Margolin
Oct. 21, 2013
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/exclusive ... d=20637341

NRA: Secretary General of Interpol Suggests an Armed Citizenry to Combat Terrorist Violence
Friday, October 25, 2013
https://www.nraila.org/articles/2013102 ... s-violence

[shooter37]

It's true that armed police are very rare in the UK, BUT visit an airport or major train/transport terminal and it looks like an armed camp.
Something about a pretty young lady with an MP5 that just makes me warm all over............

[VoiceofReason]

It will continue on it’s present course until they have no hope of saving any semblance of Britain then they will be asking the U.S. to “help” them. I remembered this from one of the books I have on WWII. It would take a lot of time to find it again so I found the following on google. I can’t vouch for the details of the following but I can say it likely happened as there are more references to the program in other usually trustworthy publications.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/650257/posts

Send A Gun To Defend A British Home ... Pistols - Rifles - Revolvers - Shotguns - Binoculars

American Rifleman -- Official Journal of the National Rifle Association of America | April 2002 | Mark A. Keefe, IV -- Editor

Posted on ‎3‎/‎20‎/‎2002‎ ‎12‎:‎48‎:‎33‎ ‎PM by
________________________________________
In the dark days following the British Expeditionary Force's evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940, Great Britain was a nation virtually disarmed. And not just by the need to abandon equipment on France's beaches to save British "Tommies" to fight another day, but by the policies of its own government. The days of devotion to civilian markmanship, "volunteer rifle clubs" and the idea that there should be "a rifle in every cottage," as proposed by the Prime Minister Marquis of Salisbury in 1900, had given way to restrictive gun control laws that required subjects to demonstrate "good reason" to merely obtain a handgun or rifle. So with Hitler's legions poised to cross the English Channel, the British people were defended by an ill-equipped and defeated army and a "Home Guard" armed with little more than sporting shotguns and pikes.
Help for the beleaguered nation came from both the American government and from the American people, the latter through the "American Committee for Defense of British Homes." In late 1940, the committee sent an urgent appeal -- which, of course, appeared in American Rifleman -- for Americans to send "Pistols - Rifles - Revolvers - Shotguns - Binoculars" because "British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes." Thousands of arms were collected and sent to England, one of which was a .30-'06 Model 1903 target rifle owned by Major John W. Hession. Hession was one of the pre-eminent highpower rifle target shooters of his day, and he used that rifle to win Olympic gold at Bisley Camp in England in 1908. The rifle, unlike the majority sent, was returned and can now be viewed in he national Firearms Museum.
The U.S. Government responded to Britain's peril as well with passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. Almost immediately, quantities of "U.S. Rifle, Cal. .30, M1" were on their way across the Atlantic, and those guns are the subject of an article by noted M1 Garand historian Scott Duff starting on p. 42. The "British Garands" have an interesting history but the importance of arming the British at that time is made clear by the fact that the rapidly growing U.S. Army itself did not have sufficient numbers of the then-new M1 Garands. Winston Churchill wrote in Their Finest Hour: "When the ships from America approached our shores with their priceless arms, special trains were waiting in all ports to receive their cargoes. The Home Guard in every county, in every village, sat up through the night to receive them. ... By the end of July we were an armed nation ... ."
Now, sadly, Britain is again a disarmed nation, where even Olympic athletes wanting to represent their country cannot own a handgun and where an act of self-defense can land a subject in jail. As with virtually all rifles and handguns, those likely few remaining guns sent to England in its time of desperate need have been confiscated and destroyed. Despite the very near enslavement of England being so close a mere six decades ago, the lesson of the false promises of gun control and personal disarmament were not learned.
Sincerely, ... Mark A Keefe, IV -- Editor

[Abraham]

Criminals in the U.K. are first class citizens.

Law abiding, second class...

Why would anyone living there not make plans to leave?

I know when things got bad enough in South Africa many left.

I met a bunch of S. Africans (all of them M.D.'s.) while in New Zealand visiting a friend who is a G.P. there.

I've spent time in the U.K. and found the country wonderful, but the people sadly misinformed.

[psijac]

The man who created the British Police force essentially forsaw what we in America are seeing today. SWAT, Counter Terror, Drug war teams all just itching to use the latest and greatest toys gifted to them by the government and military industrial complex. A man was recently raided because he had past due student loans. Whenever someone innocent dies on a botched raid their response is always the same: "at the end of the day, an officer has to go home."

So he created a police force without guns so citizens would not feel that they were under military occupation.

There's probably a balance between the extremes but no one is rushing to it.

[stroo]

Robert Peel, the man who created the British Bobbie, didn't outfit them with guns because at the time a lot of British men carried guns. He assumed that if a Bobby needed a gun, he could call on a nearby citizen and use their gun.

[Middle Age Russ]

Robert Peel, the man who created the British Bobbie, didn't outfit them with guns because at the time a lot of British men carried guns. He assumed that if a Bobby needed a gun, he could call on a nearby citizen and use their gun.

I struggle to understand this reasoning on a couple of levels, but then again I am probably more concerned with effectiveness than gentility in an enlightened society. First, if a gun is needed in a situation why would a citizen prefer to give their gun to the constabulary rather than using it themselves? Second, which is likely to be more effective using the gun in a time of need -- the owner who presumably has some experience operating the gun, or the constable who borrowed it and presumably has little or no experience using it?

Policy decisions based more on feelings and desires than facts and proven tendencies are wrong-headed. Political correctness be dashed.

[Abraham]

I didn't know "Peelers" as they were originally known, depended on the kindness of strangers...

The idea that if I'm armed (yes, I know we're speaking of yesteryear, to say the least...) I'm going to arm you because you're part of the constabulary is bizarre.

Git yer own darn boom stick.

[stroo]

Peel's approach to policing was interesting compared to current attitudes.

In Peel's model, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.

He had nine principles:

To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

All of this in 1829.

[JP171]

first off, the British, great Britain has always had a notion of the general populace are not allowed to have weapons except as the peerage requires their services as the peerage sees fit, began way back in the dark ages because of the feudal system, no "lord" wants his head handed to his widow because he was a rapist, thieving, lying, abusive jerk(think prima nocturas) even though most of the peerage was and still is. nothing has changed in over 500 years in the united kingdom, look at what they did to Scotland and tried to do to all of Ireland but only got a small part. they believe they are civilised(GB spelling) but they aren't and never will be, they attempted as a country to invade the US twice after the revolutionary war and failed both times and still gripe about how the Dutch supplied us with illegal weapons thru the lesser Antilles. The people of the United Kingdom(really? your so self aggrandizing kingdom? really?) are nothing more than serfs who are under the control of the false monarchy of QE, actually the 5 that are permanent under secretaries that really run that death camp called the UK are keeping them fat stupid and under control! and the territories that are under the rule of the UK are just as bad. If a citizen of the UK renounces his or her citizenship for becoming an American citizen, or Russian or any other country in the world, the government of the UK still considers them to be SUBJECTS of the crown till they die. so yea the UK has changed, my sister Mary's lilly white......