Problems with eyewitness accounts notwithstanding, they still mean a hell of a lot more than your own totally unsubstantiated speculations on what may or may not have occurred.
London riots: Violence erupts for third day
- Thread starter Ghost_007
- Start date
Problems with eyewitness accounts notwithstanding, they still mean a hell of a lot more than your own totally unsubstantiated speculations on what may or may not have occurred.
Expanding Ammunition refers to shotgun cartridges. After all the payload loses it's force in the expansion over distance. Like I said previously this lessens accidental fatalities (In fact I use to live near a woods where at certain times of year the windows would occasionally be hit by pellets from shotguns, never broke the pane of glass mind you)
Can you give me an example of another weapon banned for soldiers but available against civilians? Maybe I should move this to another thread?
Kind of interesting way of talking around the primary purpose of hollow-point bullets, which is exactly to disappate said momentum inside the body of the target and so do maximum damage to them. None of which lessens the dangers of "crossfire" or "stray bullets" - makes those dramatically worse, actually. But, yeah, it does mean that any bullets that have already hit a person are less likely to injure any other people.
Hollow point bullets are banned for soldiers? Reference?
Well, maybe this is their way of fighting unemployment...looks like there will be plenty of construction jobs coming to a street near you.
You could say that a black guy butt raped you on national television, then every racist watching that channel will automatically increase their already fired up grudge toward people of ethnicity. They don't care about facts, they only care about what they want to hear.
The same can be said about the people responding with violence, however it's not anti-black, it's anti-blue. It's easy to be hypocritical about police, I know they can be on occasion rude, obnoxious and even self-absorbed, however I also know that they have to do the job that people tend to neglect need to be done.
They attempt to keep some semblance of order where otherwise there would be none, most of the time they deal with petty family squabbles in residences that if the parents had ever been to a family planning clinic probably would have been warned against having a family in the first place.
They get spat at, have comments made. (Heck even when I was a young rogue myself I flicked a joint butt into a panda car.) Police are revered and untrusted by those that tend to have good reason to worry about them (Those that are usually already involved in some form of low level crime).
General knowledge about the Geneva convention [which as it turns out, is wrong, its the Hague convention]
Ah, interesting stuff.
But kind of an irrelevant historical anomaly. Soldiers don't need hollowpoint bullets, because they use high-powered rifles which impart sufficient velocity to ammunition to cause it to fragment/mushroom on impact without any need for hollow-point designs. I.e., the guns/ammo soldiers use are actually much nastier, but don't run afoul of the Hague convention due to technicalities.
Hollowpoints are only relevant to lower-velocity guns like handguns and the like. Some kind of interesting quirks in the UK laws listed on the wikipedia page on hollowpoint bullets, though: apparently it's illegal to hunt certain types of game with anything other than hollowpoint rounds (I guess to make sure the animals die quickly after being shot).
Also I still don't think the Hague convention, Geneva Conventions, etc. have any particular applicability to domestic policing. They're only in force for armed conflict between states, or similar situations.
I am not sure how that reasoning works. The principle behind that ban is that suffering and death should not be inevitable for a soldier. So why is it justified that anyone shot by cops in London, even accidentally, should inevitably die? How is this even remotely acceptable?
"..as well as weapons designed to aggravate injured soldiers or make their death inevitable" (Just a point, that law is for war, not civilian policing)
I'm not entirely convinced that the hollow-points that are usually frowned upon are the same type as what killed the radio (Notice the bullet was removed from the radio, we have no clue as to whether a hollow-point actually killed Duggan)
Perhaps there is a different way of hollowing the slug so you have a projectile thats aerodynamic but with lesser mass than a standard full jacket.
(It was likely a 19mm from an MP5, but obviously that's only speculation on the standard issue weaponry)
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The main factor that is cited is the risk to bystanders - in a war, you aren't so much worried about the possibility that your bullet goes through the enemy soldier and hits something else (presumably, another enemy soldier). On a city street, that's a major concern.
They also bring up "stopping power," but the rationale there seems shakier - I guess in a civilian setting you're only supposed to be shooting if required to save your life from immediate peril, so you're explicitly trying to kill from the get-go. The reasoning in the Hague conventions is probably somewhat dated (this is from the 19th century, after all), and speaking to an ideal of warfare where you shoot the enemy soldier, he recognizes he's incapacitated and so drops his weapon and surrenders. This sort of prisoner-of-war type conduct (and not shoot-to-kill type conduct) being a big part of what all those conventions dealt with. Bear in mind that the point of these old-world war conventions is actually to make war easier to wage (and so, more frequent) by making it more palattable to the conscripts used as manpower - they should not be viewed as expressions of pacifist idealism, but rather as PR exercises to enable aristocrats to more easily war one another (by advertizing their wars as more "humanitarian" to their subjects). Again, dated and probably shaky.
But again, it's basically an anomalous technicality: the (apparently) Hague-compatible gun/ammo systems actually used by soldiers are considerably nastier than handguns with hollowpoints. I'd much prefer cops armed with hollowpoints, to cops armed with high-powered assault rifles of the sorts soldiers use. Given the choice, that is.
I'm not advocating one over the other. IMO, issuing deadly weapons as standard issue to cops who deal mainly with civilians is not required. If necessary small trained units who use lethal force against known criminals or in violent situations is more appropriate. I prefer my cops unarmed. Although, those 15 cops beating up a 16 year old shows that attitude is more of a problem than munitions.
Most of the Police are unarmed. There are only certain taskforces and armed response units that use guns and they don't knock on the door of anyone's house without at least appraising the threat to determine the force required.
Yeah, my understanding is that English cops are largely unarmed (at least, when it comes to guns), and this shooting was done by exactly such a "small trained unit" targetting drug dealers/arms trade.
Incidentally in the past I have been at two locations where raids have taken place, one by the Customs and Excise, the other by the local CID responding to a drugs tip off. In both instances the police didn't come in with force, or brandish any weapons.
In fact the Customs lot just knocked on the door standing there with a briefcase for evidence processing and the CID just woke me up with a ID badge in my face.
(Both incidents I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and wasn't actually participating in any crimes, which might sound like the usual story but it was actually the truth.)
In fact the Customs lot just knocked on the door standing there with a briefcase for evidence processing and the CID just woke me up with a ID badge in my face.
(Both incidents I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and wasn't actually participating in any crimes, which might sound like the usual story but it was actually the truth.)
Bells
Staff member
Indeed..
After the riots came the looting. Across London windows were smashed, and shops emptied. On Monday experts said social exclusion and the breakdown of law and order could have spurred looters to disregard social norms.
"Many of the people involved are likely to have been from low-income, high-unemployment estates, and many, if not most, do not have much of a legitimate future," said criminologist and youth culture expert Professor John Pitts.
Unlike most people, some of those looting had no stake in conformity, he said. "Those things that normally constrain people are not there. Much of this was opportunism but in the middle of it there is a social question to be asked about young people with nothing to lose."
On much of the footage of the widespread theft after the riots, looters can be seen brazenly taking the goods they want, some without taking the precaution of covering their face. In one video shot early on Sunday morning in Wood Green, people can be seen leaving H&M with a haul of goods, with others standing around JD Sports apparently waiting for their turn to take goods.
One north London resident, who wanted to be identified only as Tiel, described a conversation: "I heard two girls arguing about which store to steal from next. 'Let's go Boots?' 'No, Body Shop.' 'Hit Body Shop after it's dead [meaning empty].'" The girl came out of Boots "nonchalantly, as if she'd done her weekly shop at 4:30am", he added. He described others, holding up clothes to themselves in the broken windows of H&M. "They were just so blasé about what they were doing."
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Looters found ways to justify their actions, Pitts added. "They feel they can rationalise it by targeting big corporations. There is a sense that the companies have lots of money, while they have very little." Combined with a lack of intervention from police and increasing lawlessness, the combination was explosive: " [Looters] quickly see that police cannot control the situation, which leads to a sort of adrenalin-fuelled euphoria – suddenly you are in control and there is nothing anyone can do."
A generation bred on a diet of excessive consumerism and bombarded by advertising had been unleashed, he added. "Where we used to be defined by what we did, now we are defined by what we buy. These big stores are in the business of tempting [the consumer] and then suddenly these people find they can just walk into the shop and have it all."
One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said a police officer patrolling Brixton Road on Monday morning told him he thought 12-year-olds were looting.
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Areeb Ullah, a Tottenham resident, said looters had disregarded the needs of the area and local people. And while large stores were targeted, some smaller shops had not escaped the looting. "The businesses around here were barely getting by anyway. A flower shop was set alight. What has that florist ever done? I saw a man in his shop just crying. This is only going to make Tottenham worse."
[Source]
"Many of the people involved are likely to have been from low-income, high-unemployment estates, and many, if not most, do not have much of a legitimate future," said criminologist and youth culture expert Professor John Pitts.
Unlike most people, some of those looting had no stake in conformity, he said. "Those things that normally constrain people are not there. Much of this was opportunism but in the middle of it there is a social question to be asked about young people with nothing to lose."
On much of the footage of the widespread theft after the riots, looters can be seen brazenly taking the goods they want, some without taking the precaution of covering their face. In one video shot early on Sunday morning in Wood Green, people can be seen leaving H&M with a haul of goods, with others standing around JD Sports apparently waiting for their turn to take goods.
One north London resident, who wanted to be identified only as Tiel, described a conversation: "I heard two girls arguing about which store to steal from next. 'Let's go Boots?' 'No, Body Shop.' 'Hit Body Shop after it's dead [meaning empty].'" The girl came out of Boots "nonchalantly, as if she'd done her weekly shop at 4:30am", he added. He described others, holding up clothes to themselves in the broken windows of H&M. "They were just so blasé about what they were doing."
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Looters found ways to justify their actions, Pitts added. "They feel they can rationalise it by targeting big corporations. There is a sense that the companies have lots of money, while they have very little." Combined with a lack of intervention from police and increasing lawlessness, the combination was explosive: " [Looters] quickly see that police cannot control the situation, which leads to a sort of adrenalin-fuelled euphoria – suddenly you are in control and there is nothing anyone can do."
A generation bred on a diet of excessive consumerism and bombarded by advertising had been unleashed, he added. "Where we used to be defined by what we did, now we are defined by what we buy. These big stores are in the business of tempting [the consumer] and then suddenly these people find they can just walk into the shop and have it all."
One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said a police officer patrolling Brixton Road on Monday morning told him he thought 12-year-olds were looting.
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Areeb Ullah, a Tottenham resident, said looters had disregarded the needs of the area and local people. And while large stores were targeted, some smaller shops had not escaped the looting. "The businesses around here were barely getting by anyway. A flower shop was set alight. What has that florist ever done? I saw a man in his shop just crying. This is only going to make Tottenham worse."
[Source]
Interesting nights ahead.
I have family living close to where these riots were happening. All of them have spent terrifying and sleepless nights as bands of children and teenagers roamed the streets..
Sounds to me like much if not most of the rioting is the responsibility of people who aren't actually working. Doesn't exactly look like a labour uprising to me.
Bells
Staff member
Considering the number of businesses affected, the working man of these areas may now find themselves unemployed as businesses may struggle to reopen after this.. Some may not have been insured properly or even able to afford insurance for their stock. Others are now homeless as their homes were set aflame by the rioters.. All of whom were in a bad financial situation before and it is probably much worse for them now.
One of the frustrating things about this is that they went for shops, but they also attacked the residence of people who had little to begin with. There is no sense in driving poor families from their homes and then torching said homes. There is no point in that. Where will those people go now? What will they do?
Yes, there were wealthy brand stores that were a big target. However if you look at the images, the majority of those destroyed were small stores, run by people trying to make a living..
This isn't so much a rise against 'the man' or 'the state'.. but a 'fuck you I'm doing what I want and taking what I want'.. My husband pointed out this morning.. Rioters in ME countries currently rising up against their dictators without looting and those against the Government meetings of heads of State went after the state and big capitalism.. This is different. This is a free for all and they are seeing an opportunity to grab what they want and they are doing it.