It’s not much, but it’s a start:

READING, England — During his training to become a British police
officer, Ben Johnson recalled, an instructor told him and other
recruits, “If you ever see somebody carrying a gun, turn and run away
as quickly as possible.”

“It was a bizarre situation,” said Johnson, 34, a former police
officer in Garland, Tex., and U.S. Army soldier who moved here with his
British wife three years ago and became this country’s first
non-British police officer. He said running from trouble was exactly
the opposite of what he learned as an American cop.

Now Johnson is publicly challenging one of the great traditions of
law enforcement in Britain, what he calls the “old-fashioned idea of
the unarmed bobby on the beat.” He has written to his chief asking for
permission to carry a gun, arguing that Britain is no longer safe for
unarmed and under-trained police officers. He says he will resign if
the chief refuses.

Johnson’s case has caused a media furor here, partly because an
American — a Texan no less — is claiming he feels less safe as a
police officer in Britain than he did on the beat in the United States,
which is routinely portrayed here as a gun-drunk Wild West.

…

Britain has some of the world’s toughest gun-control laws, and
violent crime, while increasing, is still far less common than in the
United States. There were 184 murders last year in London, a city of
more than 7 million people, compared with 572 in New York City, which
has 8 million people.

…

“The U.K. is changing rapidly, and the police have been slow to
adapt,” said Johnson, 6-foot-4 and razor thin, cradling his infant
daughter in his lap in the dining room of his neat row house. “We
should value the lives of police officers enough to properly equip them
and train them to do the job — even if that means getting rid of some
old-fashioned notions.”

He said he had 36 weeks of academy training and
supervised field work to become a police officer in Texas. But at
Thames Valley he said he received less than half that, and most of the
instruction involved how to fill out paperwork.

Johnson said British officers are instructed to retreat if they see
a gun and call for backup from armed officers, but that can give
suspects time to escape.

I love how they compare the entire U.K.
London, with tough gun control laws, to NYC also with tough gun control
laws.  Why not compare it to the states of Washington and Idaho
combined?  Those states are almost friendly to gun owners and the
right to self defense.  They have about the same population and a good mix of urban and rural areas.  Why?  Because it’s the Washington Post and they have an agenda.  Here is a comparison they could have done:

Washington and Idaho Population according to the 2000 census: 5894143 + 1293953 => 7188096
Washington and Idaho murders and non-negligent manslaughter (FBI Year 2000 UCR): 196 + 16 => 212.

So, even with the “gun-drunk” Wild West states of
Washington and Idaho the number of murders is comparable.  Could
it be that something other than rate of gun ownership is the dominate
factor?  Any sane person would conclude that, but the anti-gun bigots aren’t sane.�
That there is even a debate about keeping policemen disarmed in the
U.K. is further proof of that nationwide case of Hoplophobia.  Fortunately there is help–if they would just take advantage of it.

Update: My mistake.  The Washington post
comparison was London to NYC, not the entire UK to NYC.  I’ll
update with city to city murder rates when I have more time.

A couple of cops are shot, one killed, when responding to a call of an armed robbery in progress.  And they are “skeptical” that arming the cops would increase their safety.  A couple of hours of simulations with AirSoft guns would answer that question quite decisively but they are so paralyzed by their own hoplophobia they can’t consider the obvious:

Mr Davis accused the government of failing to tackle the source of gun crime and particularly the illegal holding of firearms.

He said gun crime had doubled to around 10-11,000 since 1996 when Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland. 

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the government was keen to learn any lessons from the Bradford shootings.

“My main priority is to ensure that guns no longer have a place on our streets and that armed gangs who terrorise innocent people are brought to justice,” he said.

But he signalled his opposition to arming all police, citing evidence from other countries which suggested it encouraged criminals to carry guns.

“I remain sceptical that arming all police officers all of the time would make them safer,” he said, writing in The Sun.

“Indeed, all the experience from other countries where the police carry firearms demonstrates that this only encourages the criminals to arm themselves and potentially to turn law enforcers’ own weapons on to the police themselves.”