[duncan_bayne]

> Circumstances requiring engaging with pistols == bad day for everyone

I've shot a bit, but only rimfire long guns, air rifles, and air pistols. The pistols were harder to shoot by a _long_ margin, and I can imagine it'd get orders of magnitude harder w/ more recoil, noise to promote flinching, etc. etc.

So with your comments in mind, and my own limited experience, do you have any idea why every Police-critter here in Australia is armed with a pistol, rather than something easier to use? I mean, in my head it looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEhMKQhGKE

"It feels like you're shooting a toy gun sometimes" (similar to my experience w/ a suppressed semi-auto .22LR)

vs. this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXeYAfMeaBY

The only things I can think of in favour of the pistol:

* Cheaper (maybe?)

* Less intrusive / easier to carry (for the 99.99% of the time when you _don't_ need it).

* Less intimidating (for those who don't know how hard it is to hit a moving target w/ a pistol ;) ).

[danso]

Police officers' main roles, ideally, are not to display a show of force. Think about neighborhood beat walks, to writing tickets to motorists, to handing out citations and doing stop and frisks. In all of those situations, handling a rifle is extremely cumbersome never mind socially awkward. FWIW, in some/manyjurisdictions, patrol vehicles come equipped with a shotgun.

[fivestar]

Based upon the huge number of surplus police shotguns presently for sale, I suspect that most patrol cars now have rifles in them.

[azernik]

Indeed they do. Joke I've heard:

" Q: Why carry a handgun? Are you expecting trouble?

A: If I were expecting trouble, I'd carry a rifle. "

i.e., the pistol is an everyday-carry weapon, to take with you if you think a situation might be resolved without use of force. If you know going in you're going to get in a gunfight, you go to the car and grab your shotgun or rifle.

[wyager]

Handguns are drastically easier to carry than rifles.

Hollow point handgun rounds drastically reduce the danger of over-penetration present with rifle rounds for likely police scenarios.

Most plausible scenarios where an officer would be forced to discharge a weapon wouldn't really benefit from a larger, more cumbersome weapon. Police usually have to shoot in close-range engagements that end in a few short seconds.

Cost is not really a factor. Look at the cost of weapons used by police departments. Handguns aren't drastically cheaper than decent rifles.

[Tuna-Fish]

Your third point hits the nail on the head imho, but this:

> Hollow point handgun rounds drastically reduce the danger of over-penetration present with rifle rounds for likely police scenarios.

Isn't really true anymore. There are modern cartridges for 5.56 that have great ballistics while in the air, and then very reliably dump all their energy into the first thing they hit, to the point where if you shoot drywall they will make a huge hole in it but not significantly harm a person standing a few meters behind it. If you are concerned about overpenetration, today it should guide your selection of ammo, not your weapon.

[Infernal]

Citation? If such a round exists I'd be very interested to see it.

Of all the 5.56 vs drywall tests I've seen (and there are lots out there), they never make a hole in drywall larger than 5.56 unless it has yawed, and even then it is a keyhole no larger than the un-deformed round. To make "a huge hole" in drywall it would have to expand massively and immediately, and I've never seen a 5.56 round capable of expansion when hitting drywall. Even frangible rounds essentially turn into 3 or 4 projectiles after passing through drywall, but I'd never say 1/3 of 55 grains at 2000+ fps would "not significantly harm a person".

[roninb]

FBI decided that, "[i]n every test, with the exception of soft body armor, which none of the SMG fired rounds defeated, the .223 penetrated less on average than any of the pistol bullets...".

[0] http://www.olyarms.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie...

[Infernal]

Ok - but that is ballistic gelatin penetration. The comment I replied to claimed both expansion and lack of penetration in drywall, neither of which is at all a realistic expectation for extant 5.56 rounds, to my knowledge.

[roninb]

Not trying to sound rude at all, but you should actually read the link...

Relevant excerpts:

"Tests 1-6: Bare gelatin, heavy clothing, automobile sheet metal, wallboard, plywood, and vehicle windshield safety glass, were shot a distance of 10 feet from the muzzle."

"Tests 7-13: All involved shots through heavy clothing, safety glass and bare gelatin at 50 to 100 yards, concluding with internal walls, external walls and body armor at 10 feet."

"The Bureau’s research also suggests that common household barriers such as wallboard, plywood, internal and external walls are also better attacked with pistol rounds, or larger caliber battle rifles, if the objective is to "dig out" or neutralize people employing such object as cover or concealment."

"If an operator misses the intended target, the .223 will generally have less wounding potential than some pistol rounds after passing through a wall or similar structure."

Really unsure as to how you could possibly have come to that conclusion after reading the link....

Edit: now that I think about it, people unfamiliar with ballistic testing might not know that gelatin is almost always used to find out data about efficacy downrange regardless of what other things are being tested, so I can kinda see how you might take my comment at face value and feel that it was immediately contradicted if you didn't read the entire summary (which is a bit long).

[omginternets]

Another thing in favor of a pistol: it's far more manoeuvrable when clinching [0] or grappling [1]. Police are rarely advancing on a target guns-drawn. It's more likely they'll have to draw from a clinch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinch_fighting

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grappling

[binarytransform]

I have no LEO experience but I'd imagine increased mobility, decreased chances of rounds exiting the target and hitting an innocent bystander, and cost are the primary reasons.

[omginternets]

Concerning over-penetration, that's largely a function of ammunition. Hollow-point rounds from a submachine gun don't (practically speaking) over-penetrate any more than those fired from a handgun.

[TallGuyShort]

If the concern is hitting something behind your target that you're not supposed to, over-penetration would actually be pretty low on my list of concerns about a submachine gun.

[omginternets]

Though your comment is very much beside the point, I'm nonetheless left scratching my head.

Are you suggesting that submachine guns make you more likely to miss your mark? If so, this is spoken like someone with absolutely zero firearms experience, as submachine guns are much more accurate and controllable than handguns...

[TallGuyShort]

No I've fired a handgun and a fully-automatic submachine gun several times in the last few months. Accuracy on the first shot, sure. Unless you're on semi-automatic I'd be deeply concerned about uncontrolled misses on subsequent shots. Maybe the London police's MP5s are a billion times more stable in the shoulder than a MAC-10, but still - even with ample training I'd keep it on semi-auto pretty much all of the time, or 3-shot-burst at best. The muzzle rise builds fast.

[omginternets]

You're being disingenuous by sneaking in the notion of long-burst fire. Your point about mussel climb and automatic fire is akin to saying "if you hold a pistol sideways -- gangsta style -- and repeatedly jerk the trigger, your accuracy will suck". Well duh! Use the thing properly!

Yes, firing from the hip on full rock-n-roll is less accurate than controlled shots from a pistol, though I should think that was both obvious and beside the point.

Carefully controlled shots from an SMG are systematically better-placed than carefully-controlled shots from a pistol. Full stop. Moreover, SMGs are so damn easy to control (again, assuming they're used properly, i.e. with the extensible/foldable/fixed stock) that you can trivially put 3-to-5-round bursts in a human torso at 5 meters. Anybody who can't do that has no business carrying an SMG.

Surely you'll concede than in just about any professional situation, full-auto fire is not used. Full-auto fire is a suppressive technique, and as such it is largely relegated to military action (and not with SMGs, by the way).

It is absolutely absurd to suggest that pistols are more accurate and more controllable than a firearm with a longer barrel and stock.

Absolutely, astoundingly absurd.

[jdietrich]

Here in the UK, police aren't routinely armed. We rely instead on specialist firearms officers who usually perform a rapid-response role but sometimes patrol high-risk locations.

Over here, it's actually much more common to see a police officer equipped with a sub-machinegun or a carbine rifle than a handgun. Firearms are used as a tactical resource to be deployed as needed, rather than an insurance policy for ordinary officers.

[ethanhunt_]

> police aren't routinely armed

That might be because some UK police refuse to carry because the UK doesn't have laws to protect officers (those laws that the US has that are constantly protested). https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/15/police-chief...

Can't say I blame them. Why would someone take on the chance of being charged with murder for carrying out their job's duties? It's not an easy problem to solve, but I think the ease of access to firearms is only going to increase, and they're going to have to get the UK police sorted with carrying.

[duncan_bayne]

I'm not convinced the laws should be any different for the Police, should they? A justified shoot is a justified shoot, regardless of who is pulling the trigger.

Perhaps the laws in the UK need fixing (they did in New Zealand last I checked) but it should be a level playing field.

[ethanhunt_]

I don't think there's a great answer here. Without special legal protection, you're asking police to take a job that would require them to make decisions in a couple of seconds and if they make the wrong decision, they face a high risk of either death (should've shot but didn't) or life in prison (shot but shouldn't have). I wouldn't take that job if it payed 500k/yr, but we're asking officers to take it for 60k/yr?

I'm not asking for police to be protected if they're malicious, but if a police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his hardest to make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake and shoots when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is held to the same standard as a civilian.

And people wonder why their police officers aren't the best and the brightest: anyone making a rational decision under these terms wouldn't take the job.

[duncan_bayne]

"but if a police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his hardest to make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake and shoots when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is held to the same standard as a civilian"

But that's the problem! The civilian shouldn't be going to jail, either, should they?

That is, I don't think the standard for prosecution for killing someone should be different for civilians and police.

Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it by changing self defence laws for everyone.

Or perhaps, to put it another way, under what situation could you imagine yourself as a juror convicting a civilian of murder, but acquitting a police officer who acted identically?

[ethanhunt_]

> Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it by changing self defence laws for everyone.

Thinking about that for a bit and it sounds reasonable. A cop should only be shooting someone if he believes his or someone else's life is in danger and that's the same standard as civs in most states.

Perhaps cops in the US have more protection with their unions and such. I assumed that there must be a difference between US and UK because UK officers are refusing to carry whereas US aren't, but that difference might be that US officers get fired if they refuse to carry.

[madengr]

The cops in the US (at least in my area) have patrol rifles and shotguns, which are typically kept in the vehicle.

I think with recent events in the UK it shows that rapid response is too slow; your cops need guns.