Police incompetence!!!!!!!!

[Dave D]

dean im not suggesting that you wouldnt act as you said, and i too take a dim view on the police force for the reasons you state about doing the job they sign up to do but i feel this is a seperate topic and i dont wish to enter into that debate. what my issue is is this whole culture where people, as you have done, are so intent on critisising others for what seems to be the sake of critisising.

 

you started your point by slating the polices lack of action and that they should of done anything to stop this man but then later in another post you condemn an officer for taking down a man with an immitation firearm. from another perspective that man could have been a potential mass murderer but the officer took him down before he had the chance to kill or cause harm to others. as for it being an immitation firearm; had it been real and the officer left it to chance then he would be getting a drilling for not stopping him when he had the chance. no the officer was therfore not in any real danger but he would only of known that with that good old hindsight.

 

i appreciate that you used that example to highlight a separate point but it all seems a little contradictory thus emphasising my point of this whole need to criticise every action.

[Johny Walker]

Tis the devils work:thumbdown:

 

no its not its the wifes couldnt help the derail

[Dean Lofthouse]

The difference though Dave is that one example was "contained and the area evacuated" and this recent one was "uncontained and on the rampage"

 

One used excessive force uneccesarily( because I suspect of his lack of firearms experience) and then these recent ones didn't use enough force.

[Dave D]

i do see your point and this does highlight different outcomes to different circumstances but remains that we have the benefit of discussing these with the benefit of hindsight. i dont want to get too much into debating the specifics of the actual events as i really dont know full details, like most people i would guess, and dont wish to start falling out on forums. im just expressing opinions on certain comments and guess you bore the brunt of my frustration at constant criticisms we hear day to day through the media about everything and anything and how people would have done things better:001_smile:

[Dean Lofthouse]

im just expressing opinions on certain comments and guess you bore the brunt of my frustration at constant criticisms we hear day to day through the media about everything and anything and how people would have done things better:001_smile:

 

As you may have guessed Dave, I am passionate about legitimate firearms use and when it all boils down to it the only people who get critisesed are firearms users.

 

It doesn't help when you see witness's interviewed describing how this nutter had a "massive rifle with massive telescopic sights and a huge silencer, the gun was nearly touching the ground and he had to hold it at 45 degrees because it was that heavy"

 

It was a .22 rimfire, which is a small firearm for shooting rabbits !!

 

Statements like that directly affect me and the knee jerk reactions directly affect me, so I have every right to complain and spit out my dummy.

 

This may sound selfish and it isn't meant to be, but the quicker the police had acted the lesser the impact on normal firearms certificate hiolders like myself. Within 12 hours of this happening, there were people being interviewed, including politicains, about firearms laws and how we can tighten them.

 

We already have the tightest gun laws in the world. I particularly have more reason than most to moan as the last time this happened the knee jerk reaction was to ban pistols, which robbed me of a chance to get into the olympic pistol team. It also makes it worse for us to go about our business as everytime someone sees someone with a gun (even in a bloody field) they call the police. I am getting fed up of armed response coming out to check me out despite it being quite obvious I am legitamately there.

 

Last time I was zeroing my rifle, off the bonnet of my fully sign written landrover, in a 50 acre field in full veiw of around 100 houses to one side and I was 50 yards away from the farm house. Some idiot with binoculars wasted police time reporting me, knowing full well I was there legitamately.

 

Incidents of illegal guns are rife, people are shot on a daily basis but we hear very little. I'm sorry about the 12 people killed but that is a small number compared to the yearly uk death rate of illegal guns, yet there is a massive uproar. Perhaps if the number of illegal gun related incidents happened all on the same day it might get a bit more attention and make people realise that there are probably more illegally held firearms owned by drug selling gangs and wanna be gangsters than there are held legally. There are only 800,000 certificate holders in the uk

 

Read these figures, it will make your toes curl

 

Firearms Offences - England & Wales

 

We just get hammered all the time and it's about time the police got the hammering for not doing their job right, not the likes of me that has nothing whatsoever to do with some nut rampaging about the countryside killng folk

[Marko]

Dean,

 

Whilst I don't know much about Police tactics in such situations I do share your frustration with the speed with which firearms legislation was put under the media spotlight.

 

The biggest bout of my dismay was reserved for the BASC spokesman, who could have pointed out many factual points about legitimate gun ownership but chose to offer the Olympics Shooting Team as a primary reason for maintaining the present ownership laws. Whilst I know this is a subject close to your heart, you will also accept that if that is the very best reason for having firearms in the community then we have lost the argument. I can't understand why BASC had not got a fully prepared set of bullet points for such an arising (in emergency break glass) - it was a very very poor response to pertinent (and totally predictable) points being raised.

 

The professor advocating we should store ammunition in centralised repositories was another classic that the media latched on to. Perhaps the fox will wait while I go on a 20 mile round trip to pick up a few bullets.

 

Since the awful Cumbria incident I have noticed two news items - someone shot in Liverpool ("the victim was known to the police" so that's alright then?) and the CCTV footage of a lad shooting up a house - both well down the news and both passing without further comment. To my mind, the quanitity and availablity of illegal firerms are the real issue that the police and media should be focussing on.

[Dean Lofthouse]

Here in Huddersfield shooting incidents are a weekly occurance and now dont even make the local rag never mind local news

 

Perhaps I have been a little harsh on the police, but when I sit back and watch the ignorant misinformed comments that the public and so called experts come out with regarding firearms, it really does annoy me as it affects me directly and as such I feel I have a right to comment.

 

One of the reasons me and a firearms officer hold a firearms demonstration at our show, is to educate the public and kids as to how firearms are used, the reason we have them is to show how dangerous and powerful they are in the wrong hands or when mis-used our demonstration is the most popular event at the show, even to firearms holders. But most of all to educate the local populous that there are legal guns out there and introduce them to the reasoning behind them

 

I for one have campaigned for courses to be passed similar to NPTC courses before certificates are issued simply because there should be a bar set for gun handling, safety and ballistic awareness.

 

Over 7000 firearms related incidents last year, yet one incident in ten years of a legally held firearm and there's massive interest and the public baying for legislation.

 

Like I said previously, if these 7000 incidents were condensed into one day then the public and "mates" might start "helping the police with their enquiries" instead of protecting their so called mates and neighbours either through fear or some kind of mis placed "loyalty"

Edited June 10, 2010 by Dean Lofthouse

[Catweazle]

If, as has been written here, the area was so remote as to take hours for armed police to arrive then the local police stations or even cars should have firearms available.

 

I'm not suggesting pistols, they take far too much training to use effectively at anything other than very short range, but a pump action shotgun loaded with AAA buckshot. This would require much less training and practice.

 

Such a weapon would allow a few quick shots from behind cover to disable a maniac, from a distance of 50+yds, the police could then retire to safety and wait for the experts.

[LancsMike]

Here in Huddersfield shooting incidents are a weekly occurance and now dont even make the local rag never mind local news

 

One of the reasons me and a firearms officer hold a firearms demonstration at our show, is to educate the public and kids as to how firearms are used, the reason we have them is to show how dangerous and powerful they are in the wrong hands or when mis-used our demonstration is the most popular event at the show, even to firearms holders. But most of all to educate the local populous that there are legal guns out there and introduce them to the reasoning behind them

 

I for one have campaigned for courses to be passed similar to NPTC courses before certificates are issued simply because there should be a bar set for gun handling, safety and ballistic awareness.

 

Over 7000 firearms related incidents last year, yet one incident in ten years of a legally held firearm and there's massive interest and the public baying for legislation.

 

I agree totally Dean, I've lost track of local articles on shootings going on in Huddersfield, Halifax and Bradford but they barely get covered on the local news let alone national - With this incident in Cumbria [ not far from where I actually grew up ] the Media are just being a bunch of bloody Ghouls capitalising on peoples fears of firearms and the '' What if '' scenario of a mad gunman. Not to mention because its so many in one go it goes from being just an isolated incidence in the Media's eyes to being a national story because so many died.

 

With Firearms, I was taught from a young age to always respect them because the second you don't someone can be either seriously hurt or killed, also did Cadets for a few years and before we even touched a GP Rifle/LSW/GPMG we had to know all its features back to front, all the safety measures and even before shooting we had to be cleared - taught properly how to do it so I'm fully with you that if people wish to use firearms there should be some form of training certification to show they are competent and not idiots toting a dangerous bit of kit.

 

On a bit of a tangent/tinfoil hat note - Is it just me or is the timing of this conveniant with this shooting after what happened in Palestine with some Brits and other nationalities being killed by the IDF on that Aid barge ? Just stinks of Agenda setting by the Media again to divert our attention away from the IDF butchering unarmed people because the outcry from that was getting really bad, what happened in Cumbria was horrible and very tragic but it just feels like the Media really jumped on this bandwagon to sway the general public away from what happened in International Waters - thats my tuppence.

[Mark J]

On a bit of a tangent/tinfoil hat note - Is it just me or is the timing of this conveniant with this shooting after what happened in Palestine with some Brits and other nationalities being killed by the IDF on that Aid barge ? Just stinks of Agenda setting by the Media again to divert our attention away from the IDF butchering unarmed people because the outcry from that was getting really bad, what happened in Cumbria was horrible and very tragic but it just feels like the Media really jumped on this bandwagon to sway the general public away from what happened in International Waters - thats my tuppence.

 

Aye.