Armed officers fired almost 50 rounds, killing three attackers who had plowed a rented van into pedestrians on the bridge, killing three, then jumped out and stabbed Saturday night revelers in Borough Market, an area packed with bars and restaurants. Five people died of stab wounds, and almost 50 people were wounded in the attack.
Source: Police first responder describes London Bridge attack mayhem | Star Tribune
For some reason, there has been a lot of derision in the gun community about the fact that armed English LEOs went almost 50 rounds on the three London Bridge assholes. Let’s say for the sake of this discussion that the total number of shots fired was 48, that makes it 16 shots per target. Bear with me.
There is a high probability that the officers engaging the terrorists were equipped with long guns rather than side arms and it does not strike me as if they are subject to any NY SAFE Magazine capacity regulation so we are talking 30 rounds, give or take.
Next we have the Terrorists, moving fast attacking people with knives and wearing what initially was thought to be suicide vests. We don’t know if all the rounds spent hit the target and we know that at least one round ended up hitting an American tourist so that was a miss or shot-through.
Now please, tell me what LEO or regular person in his right mind will shoot USPSA-style and only grace a proven killer with only 2 shots and then move away? No-frigging-body. You are gonna shoot till that sucker falls down and then shoot again to anchor his ass for good. Knowing that the long guns are full auto, you are going to have more than one shot coming out and probably they shot controlled bursts to secure the Terrorists. And this is not square range but real life in the real uneven world under the biggest dump of adrenaline these officer probably ever experienced. Asking for Olympic-type of shooting for bullseye and under perfect control is not only unrealistic but downright stupid.
So, one Brit cop shooting 16 rounds to nail and secure a Jihadist is not declaration that it was a sloppy shooting. And if the Terrorists were engaged by more than one cop each, we are now talking 8 rounds per LEO.
And that is a NY SAFE Act approved mag dump.
If you want to criticize something about Brit LEOs, you have the idiot London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick who not only patted herself in the back for an 8 minute response time to the attack but was proud of the wide variety of victims because Diversity is kinda cool, even in death so politics.
For commissioner Dick, who thinks 8 minutes is a good response time, someone should ask her how she’d like to have herself and her family slashed and stabbed for 8 minutes while she waits helplessly.
I bet that wouldn’t get a favorable response.
My first response when reading the title: “Only 50?”
I would have mulched the bodies of the terrorist attackers.
Actually, 8 minutes is in fact a pretty decent response time.
In the video, the LEOs have long guns, but the image is so grainy I can’t tell what they are. The murderers are charging the LEOs and the LEOs are firing and moving at the same time. I think they did a pretty decent job of firing and moving, with pretty a pretty good hit-to-miss ratio, at night, in a chaotic environment, with people screaming and the light constantly changing because of flashing red and blue lights, etc.
(But then, I’m not a keyboard ninja. Just a retired po-po and LE firearms instructor who can easily put himself in those coppers’ shoes.)
True, but I go back to being 8 minutes too late when you can be the First responder which unfortunately the British Subjects are not allowed to be.
Eight minutes is a long time when you’re under attack. But from the beginning of the attack, to the 999 calls (UK’s 911), to the routing of the call, to the dispatch of available ARMED units (rare in the UK), to the coppers’ arrival on the scene, eight minutes is a damn good response time.
It proves the truism that when seconds count, the police are minutes away. But blaming the UK street cops for a systemic problem they can’t fix (because the politicians won’t let them) isn’t the way to go.
It’s true that in the U.S. we can defend ourselves (if we choose to take advantage of the law), and the Brits can’t. That’s not the coppers’ fault.
I wanted to add to my comment, but my computer hid the “Post Comment” button when this window got too big. (Serves me right for sticking with my Commodore 64.):
When I was in Miami in 1981, the commander of the Metro Dade Public Safety Dept. (now Miami-Dade PD)’s Central Division went on TV and radio and told the people to arm themselves, because his division’s response time to a violent crime in progress was twenty minutes. So I can’t fault a basically unarmed police force for getting armed officers to a scene in eight minutes.
If you can tell me what they did wrong, I’ll be happy to listen.
8 minute response. Huh.
Compare this to an armed society (yes, I know, different circumstances) resolving the threat of a car ramming jihadi in 20 seconds: