Guns Herald Disaster

by A.N. Wilson
August 13, 2001

Few of us nowadays would choose to join the police force. This is chiefly because if we did, we should find all our colleagues to be uncongenial - the young louts one sees wearing a police uniform and roaring unnecessarily up and down in their cars with all sirens blaring, or clumsily stopping to search our fellow citizens who are in every likelihood innocent.

One would also not wish to be a policeman because the police are an organisation that once enjoyed the respect of the entire community and are now universally despised - not because they are racist or oikish, which they are, but because they are inefficient. We all know that the likelihood of them catching a burglar is next to nil.

Nevertheless, my sympathy with the police is not entirely diminished and we would all confess, if we were honest, that our chief reason for not wanting to don the blue uniform is our fear of meeting violent assault from bombers and armed robbers. It is inevitable that in these violent days the police themselves should want to be adequately protected. What is not inevitable, and is indeed downright amazing, is the fact that the Home Secretary should be increasing the number of armed officers.

The deployment of ARVs (Armed Response Vehicles) in London doubled between 1996 and 1999. Every time a badly trained police officer makes a false judgment and shoots dead a member of the public yet more public credibility departs.

These incidents - the gunning down of a man holding a cigarette lighter, for example - make us lose faith not merely in the police but in the law.

By all means give more officers a "stun gun" that would disable potentially violent assailants. Equally, might it not be a good idea to tell them to aim for their victim's legs rather than their heads or chests? But to match a rise in violent crime with a rise in accidental killings by the police is a recipe for social disaster. Surely all police guns should be removed and replaced by stun guns?