@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

@freemo @VoxDei @olives
GB police forces’ armed response units typically use Heckler & Koch MP5 & MP7s.
I write GB, as in the other component part of the UK, NI, police officers do routinely carry personal weapons (but notably very rarely used).

@guardeddon @freemo @olives Is that the same weapon as you see the armed police at airports with?

@VoxDei @freemo @olives
Airports and other venues such as Palace of Westminster, London (I visited the buildings, recently. Entrances all guarded by armed Met Police officers).
I'm not sufficiently familiar to discriminate the various types of weapons.

@guardeddon

Weird to hear one of the least armed populace has one of the best armed police force...

@VoxDei @olives

@freemo @guardeddon @olives Well, depends a bit how you look at it. For your regular beat cop, not so much - ours don't carry firearms.

Comparing like with like would probably mean only specialist firearms officers (I guess the closest US equivalent is SWAT?). I don't know what they'd tend to carry in the US, but I suspect it's heavier than that?

@VoxDei

Even our swat wouldnt be seen with a full auto gun, so still sounds like UK is more armed. We also would never have swat guarding places, you would never see them even around really expensive stuff, they come out once shit is already going down.

@guardeddon @olives

@freemo @guardeddon @olives Yeah, the ARUs are like that - you don't get them just hanging around the place, they turn up when they're needed.

All this said, on Googling, @guardeddon is correct about the model of weapon, but it's a single-fire variant in use. See https://www.eliteukforces.info/police/uk-armed-police/ under "Police Weapons". So similar in idea to the US, I guess.

@VoxDei

If it isnt full auto it isnt an MP5, that would be the SP5 and yea thats not unusual, thinking of buying one myself.

@guardeddon @olives