Quote: DaButt @ October 15 2011, 3:31 PM BSTA serious question just popped into my head and maybe one of you can answer it. What happens when a person in Tinyvillage, UK, calls 999 and says, "There's a man with a gun kicking down my door"? Can the police muster an immediate armed response or is a case of "Only Henry and Joe are armed but Henry is on holiday and Joe is eating donuts on the other side of town"?
I believe we have some armed response units; basically the arms are kept locked in a high-speed car ready for immediate use, but as to how they sort out the scheduling of the men, I don't know.
I don't think that many of our cops are qualified to use firearms, they volunteer for that and have specific training courses.
This link describes the Armed Response Vehicle of the Metropolitan London Police.
http://www.met.police.uk/co19/armed_response.htm
and here for Avon & Somerset http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/units_and_departments/operations/rpu/armed_response.aspx
and Surrey Police Force http://www.surrey.police.uk/about/firearms.asp
So the simple answer is that we have armed patrol cars roaming around 24 hours a day.