Was reading a magazine article about armed police in London. Apparently the normal armed response vehicles have MP5 and Glock on board, but backup vehicles have a G3 “sniper rifle” (presumably with some sort of optical sight?), plus a G36 and a shotgun. The latter is apparently to deal with dangerous dogs. I couldn’t see what advantage a shotgun, except possibly with a brennecke type round, would offer over any of the other shoulder weapons, especially since they will be loaded with hollow points. Is there an advantage?

A small target, potentially travelling quickly, might be better addressed by a shotgun. Also, the safety distance for any missed shots will be much longer for a rifle bullet.

Am I correct that American police departments favor a shotgun in lieu of a machine pistol (which is thought of as a military weapon)? I am fairly certain that was true when I was growing up.

Shotguns have been the traditional longarm for American police, but with the availability of Federal grant money, police departments are increasingly going to "assault rifles" to address a proclaimed "gun gap" vis-a-vis Bad Guys.

For a country with no guns, those police sure are well armed. Do they have occasion to use the MP5s often?

They'd probably be better off in a lot of cases with a lever action .44 magnum or something with more velocity and throw weight.

There are (limited) numbers of legal firearms, but it seems that if you're a stinking crim, you can get a handgun without difficulty (and as far as I can tell, cheaper than when they were legal!).

There are mercifully few shootings, but the MP5 is often "seen".

Personally, I would have thought three hollowpoints from an MP5 would have made Fido behave. If you needed more, I understood that shot had the worst sectional density, so unless you use a solid ball or very few, very large shot, it's less effective than (e.g.) one 5.56 or 7.62mm hollowpoint.

In Europe (at least here in Germany) it's the other way round. Here the submachine gun is the traditional longarm for the police, whereas the shotgun was / is considered to be rather "barbaric". The introduction of .357 Magnum revolvers and shotguns for SWAT units was a minor revolution.

I read in (an older) book that when the police in St. Paul in Minnesota once tried to acquire 4 (!) M16A1s to close this "gun gap" you mentioned, this led to demonstrations in front of the city hall. Different culture, I guess.

The driving force behind US Police wanting a high powered semi automatic weapon was the LA shootout where two individuals wearing multiple layers of body armor and armed with Kalashnikov rifles managed to stop the entire responding LAPD force for an extended period of time. The fact that the entire thing was caught on live TV and broadcast into everyone's home didn't hurt the "arm the police" cause much either...

One motivated indivual with a bolt action hunting rifle could have ended the fight rather quickly as well.... but who cares about facts when you have hype

Bing!

Lever Action 30-30 headshots...It'll put deer down. It'll most certainly put a man down.

Particularly in urban areas. Your average law man still will be using a shotgun in most locals though, and likely if they have an M-16 in the car they also have a shotgun.

Balz! Shoot them in the face with the shotguns the cops already have in their patrol cars.

I think they were limited to only buckshot at the time.

Well, in deference to the guys at the Rampart Division, I doubt they'd have been very good at shooting someone with their riot gun over open sights at over 50 yards range. I've got a 12 gauge setup to put slugs on target at 50 yards with a red dot scope. It works pretty darn well too! But for anything other than pistol range work, shotguns start to loose effective range. Still, if you have a good slug gun setup, you can throw slugs 100 yards with fair accuracy and a well trained shooter. It's just over and above what most departments issue for their shotguns. Usually they're Remington 870s or the like with 00 buck or something similar which doesn't keep much accuracy or a compact pattern.

Here in the States, police have been considered "local" and non-military in nature, while European police were seen as more "National" and paramilitary. With the rise in civil unrest since the '60s and with the terrorism threat, this is changing. An interesting contrast is that for a long time, .32ACP was considered perfectly adequate in Europe, while the .38 Special was the US standard and the .32 was (is) considered a "mousegun" caliber.

Those bank robbers didn't have eye protection. 00 shot would put an eye out at 50 yards easily.

And the pattern at 50 yards is going to be VERY loose with a cylinder bore. You could totally miss a man sized target at that range. Expecting an eye hit is pretty slim.

And you could have just as easily shot the fools in the head with your pistol. The North Hollywood shootout was primarily a failure of training WRT the line cops. S/F.....Ken M

Assessor, 3 Q's: #1)Any idea what ammunition types are? Assuming they're using light&fast TAP in the G36? #2)How much training are they allowed or encouraged? Sometimes the 'beware of the man with 1 gun' thing starts to make sense. #3) Why give MP5s instead of G36 variants to all? If you miss they'll both go through walls, 9mm probably more so. And I think T.W. had an article saying that women complained MP5 was too heavy. Suppose they're just left-over and issued because they're around?

And for 1 answer - reason for shotgun - it's proven. A) Buck stops threats fast, if used at appropriate ranges it has the effect of being shot many times with a pistol, and is likely to hit something critical which will cause quick or immediate incapacitation. This isn't hype it's fact, There's a fackler article comparing statistics. BCDE) It's easy to learn and use, cheap and reliable. F)There's other ammo than buck, I guess for police that would be a big thing. But it might sound better to say they're for dogs than killing quickly & effectively, or crowd control;)




No names or details, but some places might have policies where shotguns are for a certain range or closer like maybe 17m or such, and only pistols to be used beyond that. That's if pistols and shotguns are what are on-hand. And some places have policies like making sure there's nothing behind the BG in case the shots miss. At 50m you're guaranteed some pellets will miss, and when the backstop is a bank you know people are in, policy would be very against shotguns - (Lawyer "You knew some pellets would miss and you knew people were behind target - pay up.). Even if a pistol bullet missing would be more energetic.

The way the driver was taken down made more sense. They shot him 9mm in the legs; skip-shooting iirc. Perfect, perfect for armor and perfect for the surroundings, compared to trying headshots on bobbing or obscured target in populated neighborhood.




That sounds cool and fun. But technically speaking, isn't it working against the very strengths of shotguns? As well even if police had that setup I don't think they'd be allowed to shoot slugs, because of penetration. Out of curiosity, Aimpoint?



Did any dept even have FTS drills before this incident? Maybe best training would be to just take cover and stay there, considering the circumstance - don't shoot when you can't hit, wait for them to get in the car, then choose when where & how.

I don't know about PD training standards prior to this, but all .mil units I've been part of have trained for the FTS/Mozambique scenario once past the basics of weapons marksmanship and gunhandling skills.

Most police officers are trained to contain the problem and wait for SWAT or other special teams of guys who are actually trained to deal with the issue. The problem with that is that every fool knows this and will simply work to break out of the containment plan. Shit, the N Hollywood guys were clowns, they didn't kill a single officer, if they had any sort of real training, ability or coordination, the LAPD would have had a running gunfight bigger than what they had. The other key problem is the fact, as happened in N Hollywood, that the "special team" is usually in the wrong place. The SWAT guys were crosstown and had to show up in their PT gear on an adhoc basis. They were the ones who did eventaully deal with the problem, but it really was a goatrope. S/F.....Ken M

On a point of info, the MP5s and G36s used by British police are semi-auto only. They are carried to achieve greater accuracy at longer ranges than a pistol, not to step up the firepower.

When I was a young 'un the police used .303 Lee Enfields when they got beyond pistol range, which were considerably more destructive tham a 5.56mm.

No idea what they use in the G36 - confess to never having seen them come out - all I've ever seen when the MP5 isn't considered to be enough gun is sniper / DMR setups (rifle on bipod, optical sight etc) and not G36's.

As for training, these guys get a LOT. Since we don't arm all the police, the police who are armed get time to practice, and burn a lot of rounds. The MP5 is used (AIUI) since it's easy to get good groups at shortish ranges, followup shots are easy, it's (allegedly) ultra-reliable. I think buying and issuing them was a concious decision. Only UK special forces ever had them, so there wasn't a pool lying around to hand out. As for complaining about weight, my experience is that no matter what is issued to who, someone will ALWAYS complain it's too long, too heavy, too clumsy, too short, too cheap too expensive or all of these.



I worked this out, but just wondered whether in the hands of men trained to put three rounds through the bottom of a coffee cup it made much difference. They wouldn't use firearms for riot control in any reasonably foreseeable situation, that the ammo selection might not be a big deal. Does anyone know if British police have ever used shotguns with solid rounds to take doors off? The usual approach seems to be battering ram, petrol-driven power saw or even oxygen cutter.

Thanks for the input, Lucky.

Which IMHO makes more sense than handing out fully-automatic SMGs and ARs to the average police officer, who usually don't enjoy the same kind of weapons training as SWAT officers do.

BTW: I've always wondered what's the reason behind the odd 37mm calibre in riot guns? Did this kind of calibre simply appear before the usual 40mm military grenade calibre?

British armed police officers are nearer to SWAT than "ordinary" police. The 37mm riot gun I think far precedes the 40mm GL. IIRC the riot gun goes back to the immediate post-war period, and unrest in the then-colonies. The calibre (1.5 inches in old money, or near enough) was probably intended to use some sort of signal ammunition (from cheap stock) as its propellant and to propel bits of a standard broom handle.

It's a Mossberg 590 with an 18.5 " barrel and a cylinder bore. It's a 0 power Simmons 35mm tube that's made for shotguns iirc. The idea is that even if it's batteries are dead, you can still sight down the bore through the scope and get a good point of aim for proper patterns. For slug work though, the red dot is zeroed at 50 yards and works REALLY well for putting the slugs I zeroed it with on paper at the point of aim. I haven't played around too much but it works well with the 2 3/4" winchester slugs and the 3" magnum slugs I also have with the gun. For man sized targets, it's pretty darn nifty. Since it's a home defense shotgun, I keep #7 shot up the barrel as I don't want to do anything but pepper the old folks's house across the street. If I have a harder target at larger range I can pull slugs out of the stock (speed feed) or 00 out of the sling. there's 3 3" slugs on the sling as well.

37mm is a smoothbore. They are not hi-lo pressure systems like a 40x46mm launcher.

Simon

According to some gun writers, the shotgun in police use has certain a pyschological advantage in that the shotgun has a bigger "threat" value. Apparently the action of racking the pump action was quoted by cops as a good intimidating gesture and make crims think twice about their next move.

Besides looking big and mean, the shotgun is also damn good for hitting someone who don't need to be shot.

Its ballistic advantages are so many. It is a instant man-stopper. Most people hit by a shotgun blast will not likely get up soon. And statistics show that people usually die from shotgun wounds compared to even AK47, 5.56 or any other calibres.

And as also mentioned, hit probability is high and if the shot misses, there's less chance of stray rounds travelling 300m and killing some innocent or over penetration etc.

The fact that the police shotgun is usually a pump action with low rate of fire can be remedied by the host semi and fullauto shotguns now available. The Russians make the most fullauto assault shotgun types.

And lastly you have to check out the amazingly incredible range of new shotgun ammo. They're almost science fiction!

EDIT: my avatar is me with a full-length12-gauge.

I was thinking more along the lines of laying prone in the street (or atop a building of similar distance) at a range of ~500 meters, where the AK toting, shoot from the hip fool would pose very little real threat. A basic .308 with a 6x scope, in the hands of a modestly skilled shooter would be very effective in that context.

Why give the dirtbag a chance to get lucky when you don't have to.



Ken, you are not an average shooter. I think you may be allowing your skill level to alter your perspective. I know that if I found myself in pistol range of someone with an AK and body armor....I'd be having issues with my third point of contact

I'm not so sure you have all your facts straight. Getting shot at close range with a proper loading from a 12 ga is bad news... but there are a good number of trade offs involved, the weapon is NOT an instant man stopper all the time.

Training isn't the same as delivery: the hit rate of the British police when using lethal firearms for real is 67%. And if faced with a big aggessive dog coming straight for you at high speed I would expect that to decline somewhat. I'd prefer a load of buckshot for that job.

Correct - it was derived from the flare gun which was around before WW2. The calibre may be quoted as 1.5 inches, 37mm or 38mm but they're all the same (with the exception of the ARWEN/Police Ordnance/Sage Control Ordnance 37mm, which use a different round of ammo). Gun and ammo tolerances tend to be large, so big ammo may not fit small chambers. Generally speaking, the 37mm ammo uses black powder propellant and is fired from smoothbores. I could go on about the ammo options for some time...

The British police 37mm riot gun (L104A1) is different: it is made by Heckler & Koch, has a rifled barrel, an optical sight and purpose-designed high-quality plastic baton rounds. This has a high probability of hitting a torso out to 50m, and in the 50 cases in which they were fired in England (as opposed to N Ireland) between their introduction in 2001 and 2005, they scored 47 hits, with no serious injuries.

The military 40mm grenade launchers first came out in the 1960s, are generally more robust and of higher quality than riot guns, have rifled barrels (almost without exception) and an efficient high/low pressure propulsion system using smokeless powder. You can generally get any 37mm less-lethal loading in a 40mm version, plus the rifled barrel allows the use of composite projectiles of mixed construction (because they can be assured of arriving nose-first) which have a wider effective zone. However, the M203 UGL is limited in the types of LL rounds it can use, because some are too long.

NB: the tear gas rounds used by the police in domestic riot situations may not be used in military operations, as they fall foul of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. There is some disagreement over whether it's OK for the military force of an occupying power to use them. The British Army does not use them in Iraq, but I understand that the US Army has done so.

You're right, and no, I did not say all the time.

Thanks for the long explanation!

Just to mention: Finnish Police changed their shotguns to semi-auto MP5s so they can take shots to perps legs without amputating him. Or some other similar reason. They still have some shotguns and rifles but not so many i think.

I think the idea is rather than have every officer with a pistol have a smaller number with a good one.
Plus you hit the nail on the head, there aren't a lot of guns, but when the bad guys have them, its worth having something better.
That and they are primarily for 'show'.

The Chinese also have a semi-auto version

http://www.canadaammo.com/product.php?productid=20

True. Without counting Police Special Troop, every patrol has "support weapon" with them which is semi-auto MP5. In previous times the support weapon was shotgun, but it was replaced by MP5 except in rural areas. There Police still caries shotguns as they have to terminate wounded animals (hit by a car, etc.) and even some times hunting rifles with scopes for the same mission.

Reminds me a story my friend told me, he is in a local police dept in one smaller town close to my city and one night they got report of a wild boar injured in a car crash - they didn't have much to do with that (except alerting local hunters) but the local dept. of republic police (or rather the two guys on night duty) readily seized the opportunity and went after the boar with vz.58 assault rifles they got in the armory (not a standard issue on patrols, mind you, just two-three in the larger station's armories) - they got the boar with that but apparently took them some efforts and several hits.

Double tap, too lazy to fix it last evening

Tuccy, does Czech police (patrol) still use FMJ as primary ammo? Polish does, and ecountered similar problems.

Very different mindset. it's just not sensible here to use lethal force as anything other than lethal force. What is the reason for shooting the legs; fleeing suspect, or just not wanting to shoot COM?

I live a stones throw from and work in St Paul and have no recollection of such an event, which doesn't mean it didn't happen of course. It could certainly have been a bit before my time. After the L.A. bank robbery and 911 I don't think anyone begrudges the local authorities for having a few assault rifles close to hand, but they don't get seen much.

I do recall about a dozen years ago in the building next to mine a disgruntled husband walked into his wifes office and held her hostage with a .357 revolver or some such. He let her go finally but wouldn't come out. A six man SWAT team finally entered the room he was in, saw him level his gun at one of the officers and 5 of hte 6 opened fire (the 6th didn't have a clear shot from what I gather). They were using MP5SD's. The guy got hit something on the order of 30 times. They finally let us leave our building after the shooting stopped.

His family sued for use of excessive force. I never did hear how that ended up.

Also of note that sometimes the right gun is worthless if used with the wrong ammo, and in urban areas one ammo type will never work for all situations, at least two types should be on-hand. In this case the ammunition performed perfectly, being chosen for it ability to not penetrate barriers, but the ammunition needed was one that could penetrate. Whatever the case it makes a big difference what the cartridge is. http://www.defense-training.com/quips/2007/26Mar07.html

Dunno, will have to ask (my friend moved over to a SWAT unit so he should have more insight), but for 7.62x39 AFAIk they do use standard Military-grade (ie FMJ). Dunno how about pistols and submachines.

Well up here I think the stereotypical perp deserving the bullet is an intoxicated dork threatening the police with a bladed weapon or something that you usually don't need to shoot dead. I can't recall an incident where Finnish police officers were involved in a real shootout.

The police received tasers only very recently so before that the only way to remotely pacify a client was speech and a shot to the legs.

The book I mentioned (about international military and police special forces) was published for the first time in 1987, so I think the incident must have taken place in the 1970s (most likely) or maybe early 1980s.

Besides, M16A1s indicate that it shouldn't be a very recent event.

Sorry it took so long to respond to this thread. Work keeps getting in the way! The 12 ga buckshot round is very poor stopper unless it is used within about 20 or 30 feet with a cylinder bore gun. I know of many shootings with the 12 ga, and as always the range was on the order of 50 feet (too far away) and one guy took about 6 pellets. He was in court in three days later no worse for the wear! The traditional 00 buck round loses energy very fast (2.75 inch round) and with cylinder bore it spreads open way too soon. Now if you are 10 feet from the guy, of course, he is toast. But, any real distance and it is much better to either use a pistol or 9mm small rifle. This is the reason so many departments do not have shotguns anymore and concentrate on other long guns of various calibers.

I agree with all of you, the North Hollywood shoot out would have ended quickly with any decent rifle (even in 9mm) with a good scope or aimpoint type of sight on it. At 50 to 75 yards, head shots would have been very easy. A nice wide field of view 4 power would have been easy to use. But, that was then. Now many departments have all of this whiz bang gear, and never use it for anything. Oh well....

Yet regular PDs having a few higher end weapons is useful just in case. Yeah a bolt action rifle could do the job but you have a greater risk being outgunned and pinned down. A PD the town over to mine had a few G36KE (or G36KV now?) carbines, and the town is lousy enough where they could well see action.

This is what I thought, and hence couldn't get the idea of shotguns being the "best medicine" for dogs. If it's within 10m it's too close for a second shot, and if it's big enough to need to be down with the first shot, this sounds like a bad thing...


Best case is to have it and not have any reason to use it, next is have it and use it, worst is not have it and busk it, I guess.

Someone was commenting on wild boar. My wife's a zoologist, and meets people who deal with these beasties. Conventional wisdom seems to favour largish calibres (6.5mm plus) and hollowpoints, with good standoff range so you can fire repeatedly. Advice to those wishing to engage them into tight cover is "Don't".

As E5M has alluded to, the best investment of funds is training. With effective, thorough training, revolvers and shotguns* would cover the vast majority of police situartions. However, as with the military, training is low on the "gee-whiz" scale for most bureaucratic types. Plus, many (if not most) police officers are not "into" the actual tactical end of the job. For them (and many administrators who are political appointees, not former street officers), the social and political aspects take precedence over the necessity to be able to apply effective force.

*With solid slugs, shotguns can be shot minute-of-Bad-Guy out to 100yd. Longer shots are rare in urban settings.

Sound familiar?