Re: SV: [SG2] You'll never take me alive, coppers:Was RE: PA availability

At 15:57 22/09/98 +0200, you wrote:
>John Atkinson wrote:
>
>> >9mm ain't that bad. But, as far as I know, criminals can and do use
>> >eveything from zipguns to big 'ol assault rifles. When dealing with 
>> 
>> Myth.  Ever checked the percentages of crime which is actually
carried 
>> out with assault rifles?  
>
>The *percentage* is pretty irrelevant IMO - the actual numbers are.
There
>have been at least three bank robberies in the Stockholm area where the
>criminals used assault guns so far this year; there was an... incident
>some years back when a madman took an AK-4 and fired straight into a
>queue waiting to get into a night club some years back, the MC gangs in
>the south of Sweden seem to favour AT-4 anti-tank weapons or SMGs, but
>have used assault guns as well, and so on.
>
>Don't try telling me those crimes are myths. Criminals, at least in
>Sweden, *do* use anything from zipguns to assault rifles and anti-tank
>weapons. Of course these crimes make up a very small percentage of the
>*total* criminality, when there's one heavily-armed incident every
>two-three months or so and a few thousand minor crimes a day, but that
>doesn't make the bad ones a "myth".
>

Well over here the weapon of choice for small time thieves and muggers
is
the blood filled syringe.  Since most of the crime seems to come from
drug
addicts and a lot of them are HIV positive its quite an effective little
weapon.  Easily concealed too.	Bank robberies seem to favour sawn off
shotguns as shotguns are the only guns that are available for sale in
this
country and then only to farmers or occasionally for hunting purposes. 
If
you have weapons more powerful than these available to you then you're
usually a member of some terrorist group.

The police are unarmed but armed special response teams deal with armed
criminals or terrorists.  Most of the time this means that its very rare
for the police to take fatalities as the unarmed ones usually tail the
criminals and vector in the heavily armed response teams.  So no need to
send a couple of policemen (or women) in with some puny little guns and
no
body armour against a gang of armed criminals.

Since guns aren't widely available over here (believe it or not!) the
level
of crime is statistically near the lowest in the world.  So maybe its a
luxury we have as opposed to other countries with liberal gun laws to be
able to have armed response teams available when they are most needed.

The last major incident was when a bunch of dissident IRA members opened
fire without regard for civilians on a busy road after being cornered by
the anti-terrorist squad.  The squad returned fire killing one them and
forcing the rest to surrender. Even though the terrorists were armed
with
various machine guns they met up with a better armed squad of well
trained
police.

Strikes me that while this used to have something to do with GZG its
veered
off rather a lot here into the old debate of gun laws versus no gun
laws.
Which we don't need to argue about here as theres plenty of other lists
already doing that to no great effect.