Interesting Links for 02-10-2014

[andrewducker]

• Learning How To Learn
  (tags: learning education Twitter )
• A fantastic explanation of how you can tell when your cemetery is full of plague victims
  (tags: disease history death )
• Armed police U-Turn vindicates Lib Dem campaign
  (tags: police guns Scotland )
• Instructions for your local park
  (tags: howto fun park )
• If Films Were Reviewed Like Video

Comments

[gonzo21]

I'm very pleased to hear there has been a u-turn on armed police officers. I have no idea how the SNP managed to stealth it into law such that our police were now apparently regularly going around armed, and very few people seemed to have even heard about it.

[andrewducker]

I don't think it required a legal change - I think that it's considered an operational matter, with local decisions taken by each police force.

Of course, the SNP combined the Scottish police forces into one, and effectively put them under the control of Strathclyde - which has always had a harsher approach than other areas, from my understanding.

[gonzo21]

Yeah, I was very concerned when they put Strathclyde police force effectively in charge of the whole country. They are... not the police body I would have wanted to be picked for that role.

[bart_calendar]

Meanwhile, it baffles me that cops can do their jobs without guns.

If I'm robbing a liquor store and a cop turns up and I think he has a gun, I'll surrender. If he turns up and I know the odds are way high he doesn't have a gun I'll throw a bottle of vodka in his face and run.

[gonzo21]

They have pepper sprays, and I think a lot are carrying stun guns now.

[bart_calendar]

Pepper spray only works up close and, honestly, I'd rather a cop with a gun than with a stun gun. Also, there are a variety of drugs you can take that will make pepper spray useless against you.

With a gun you can disable someone simply by shooting their leg. Painful, but recoverable.

When you stun gun someone you have no control of the outcome and can easily cause a fatal heart attack or stroke.

[gonzo21]

Ah, see, our police aren't trained to shoot to injure, if they fire their weapon they are trained only to shoot to kill.

Agree with you about stun guns, I really wish our coppers didn't have them.

[bart_calendar]

What I think would be a good compromise is giving cops shotguns loaded with rock salt. It's nearly impossible to kill anyone that way, but you can disable them incredibly easily.

[gonzo21]

The general argument that most of the UK police use themselves is that they don't really want to be armed with firearms, because they think it would lead to more criminals carrying guns in response. And we are as a whole quite happy living in a society where gun crime is incredibly rare.

But yes, I wonder why the armed response teams don't also have rock-salt shotguns as an alternative to their MP5s.

[danieldwilliam]

It's not as if the British police don't have access to guns.

If there is a significant risk of the perpetrator being armed the police have access to firearms. Not just special weapons teams. A significant proportion of British police officers have a firearms certificate.

So, in your Paul Simonsesque robbing a liquor store scenario, if the UK police think you are armed with a gun they will wait for armed backup. If you escape before the armed back up arrives then they hope to track you down and arrest you at a time and place of their choosing with armed specialists.

It's just we don't like them being armed with guns when dealing with speeding offences or drunken idiots at chucking out time.