The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns

British crims are pritty stupid. There was recently a story about a man who stole a Parrot during a burglary. When arrested he told the police he took the parrot becouse 'They can talk and I didn't want it to describe me to the police'.

This is a funny story, but I don't believe the one about that parrot - that seems like a joke a school kid would tell. On a more serious note I'm glad that relatively few police here in the UK carry guns (note - some do), for one thing it means we have very few police related deaths in comparison to many other countries.

I've always heard that the Brits are a little stiff; maybe criminals can't tell the difference?

One of those would make a fantastic "bouncer" outside of my next party. If anyone nabs one, let me know if you'll ship it into the states.

Some use of psychology that. Hopefully the same type of thing will work for me during BWBW when I hang those nasty smoking pictures up in here.

The British police are some of the world's most heavily armed (specifically in cities). When standard equipment is an MP5 submachine gun, a pistol and a bulletproof vest, you know they mean business. And this is not a recent development because of the terrorism, this was when I left there to come to the US. In the country, yes, they are few and far between, and not armed per se (as an example, where I lived in the sticks, one policeman for hmm, a few hundred square miles).

Now it is true that not all police are authorized to carry weapons. But, there is something like 40% of the force trained to do so. And of those, the vast majority firmly believe in carrying weapons. The debate right now is whether it should be mandatory. Incidentally, British police used to carry webley revolvers (one of the most powerful in the world) but stopped after several coppers got shot with them.

Also, it should be mentioned that the surveillance system that covers London and is expanding to other major cities - WORKS. Not only can you prevent crime, by deterrent alone with obvious cameras, but you can track them after the fact (license plates on cars, facial recognition etc). It is so successful that European countries are considering adopting the system, and even American police and municipal authorities are looking into how the Brits do it (beware, oh ye liberty lovers...)

As something funny btw, as a throwback to the past with the Luddites smashing textile machines, there have been reports of people smashing traffic control cameras (those that take pics of you speeding and automatically mail you the ticket in the post - LOL!).

My in-law is a copper. He's trained to carry a gun. I'm worried.

UK is a test-bed of crazy crap.

LOL, Night Writer! That really cracked me up! I found it interesting though that the Yank was the one to bring up carrying guns... Hmm, we're a violent prone country. I say, why not just tasers? Not quite lethal and boy do they pack a punch.

"Officer Johnson is the country's first non-British bobby" Er no he is not.

If he wants to carry a gun he can join a firearms team as english guy posted we are allready armed and the idea that we are not is nice and quaint picture postcard of the uk

as for tasers we allready have them as well.
The issue is to be routenly armed - whcih we do not need to be.