[xhedley]

Indeed. Only 5% of police officers in England and Wales are Authorised Firearms Officers, and AFOs are only issued arms for specific operations.

I was surprised that there were only 10 incidents where police shot their firearms in year ended March 2017 (although multiple officers might use their guns in a single incident). I guess some of the use of firearms is deterrence - a lot of police wandering round waving submachine guns at airports and stations when the terrorism threat is high.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-use-of-fir...

[geofft]

Wow, that's two orders of magnitude fewer than the number of people shot and killed in the US in 2017.

[sokoloff]

Three (decimal) orders of magnitude difference, I think. (15,586 firearm deaths in the US in 2017.)

[geofft]

Sorry, missed a "by police" there - the number seems to be 987. (May their souls rest in peace.)