@olives wait... cops in the USA dont even carry sub machine guns (fully-automatic guns of any kind actually)... I am quite surprised to hear in the UK they carry these casually. My guess is they are using the term wrong and they mean a carbine.

@freemo @olives I don't claim to know a lot about the distinction, so it's entirely possible I'm wrong, but my belief was always that armed police in the UK had carbines. I'm reasonably sure they do not fire on full auto regardless. It's possible specialist counter-terrorism police have different armaments.

Police in the UK are not routinely armed with more than tasers, mind. It's only specialist armed response officers who have guns. Where I live in Devon I seem to remember hearing that there are only three armed response units to cover the entire county overnight, which is about 70 miles N-S, about 55 E-W, largely rural but with at least three population centres in excess of 50,000 people. Though again I may be misinformed.

@VoxDei

A carbine is not a full auto...

A carbine is a rifle, any rifle, with a shortened barrel from its original design. Usually a carbine is a reference to a "Pistol Caliber Carbine" which is a carbine which shoots pistol ammo.

Carbines may be lever-action (not fully or semi auto), semi or full auto.. But generally a carbine refers to non-full-auto

A submachine is a fully-automatic carbine, thus why carbine is usually reserved for non-full auto.

All that said you will almost **never** find civilians or police (even swat or the high-end cops) ever using a full auto gun. They wont even have burst fire. They usually use PCC or a full blown rifle.

They use AR-15 alot but remember an AR-15 is **not** an automatic weapon, it is a semi-automatic weapon.

@olives