> At 15:57 22/09/98 +0200, you wrote:
There
> have been at least three bank robberies in the Stockholm area where the
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.
> Jonathan Jarrard wrote:
> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
weapons or SMGs, but have used assault guns as well, and so on.
> And to think my Swedish aquaintances are always complaining about
MC = MotorCycle. I think you call them Biker gangs - Hell's Angles and
Bandidos, and their hangarounds.
Later,
> Chen-Song Qin wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
<g> Sorry. Gun, rifle... big deal <g> The Swedish translations of those words
can refer to the same weapon types.
> Seriously though, I had no idea that Sweden actually has crimes like
We didn't use to. We've imported both Hell's Angles and Bandidos from the
US... though we've got a crop of home-grown lunatics as well - and heavy
weapons are unfortunately rather easy to get, thanks to the way our army used
to be organised. On paper, we had the second or third largest army
in Europe - some 800,000 men trained in arms that could be mobilized
within two days, or at least that was the plan. This meant that many
people have, or at least had, weapons - assault *rifles* <g> - in their
homes, and that many more weapons were dispersed in storage bunkers all over
the country. Those bunkers tend to be prime targets for anyone who
wants some serious firepower - I've lost track on how many of them have
been broken into and emptied over the last five years.
Later,
> On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Niall Gilsenan wrote:
> Since guns aren't widely available over here (believe it or not!) the
I would be very hesitant to make such a simplistic cause-effect
connection. There are examples, e.g. Switzerland, that fly in the face of such
an assumption.
> So maybe its a
Let's see. Finland has about one legally owned civilian firearm per two
citizens. This roughly comparable to the amount of guns in the USA.
Do you see subgun-armed police at the Helsinki airport. No.
Is there a special SWAT-type police unit? Yes. One. For the entire
country.
Is there a special army anti-terrorist unit? No.
When was the last time a policeman was shot in the line of duty? January. By a
danish criminal. The incident before that was in the 60's.
Were the streets flooded with assault rifle-toting soldiers after that?
No.
Compare to UK:
I was in a conference in Londonderry (or Derry, if you prefer -- I don't
care) spring '97.
Did I see truckloads of cops with MP5's at Heathrow, Gatwick, Belfast and
Derry airports? Yes. Was a policewoman shot not half a mile away while I was
in conference? Yes.
Were the streets flooded with assault rifle-toting soldiers after that?
Yes.