Yes Europe, you need to be armed.

I have a good friend who is on London Metro Police Department and back around 2000, I took him shooting with my Sig 229. Did pretty well for a man who had not fired a weapon in over a decade. But we got on the subject of weapons with London PD and he told me their department has four armed response teams that can be anywhere in the city within ten minutes.

My answer, "Bill, that can be one long ass ten minutes."

We can see the issue with the Paris police officer who was murdered last week. He arrived on a bike armed with a baton and possibly a Tazer.

Now the powers that be are asking if the cops should be armed. One word, da!

Europe reconsiders police officers’ arms

PARIS — With the deaths of the three French officers during three days of terror in the Paris region and the suggestion of a plot in Belgium to kill police, European law enforcement agencies are rethinking how — and how many — police should be armed.

Scotland Yard said Sunday it was increasing the deployment of officers allowed to carry firearms in Britain, where many cling to the image of the unarmed “bobby.”

In Belgium, where officials say a terror network was plotting to attack police, officers are again permitted to take their service weapons home.

On Monday, French law enforcement officials demanding heavier weapons, protective gear and a bolstered intelligence apparatus met with top officials from the Interior Ministry. An official with the ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing talks, said automatic weapons and heavier bulletproof vests were on the table.

“We don’t want necessarily the arms that American police have. We need weapons that can respond,” said Philippe Capon of French police union UNSA.

Among those weapons, he added, are modernized criminal databases, because the current databases are out of date, and fire-walled between different law enforcement branches. “The databases are not interactive. They are not accessible to all. They are not up to date,” he said.

Unlike their British counterparts, French national police are armed, although their municipal counterparts tend to be weaponless.

But Michel Thooris of the France Police labor union said they are not permitted to have their service weapons while off duty, raising the possibility that they could be targeted when vulnerable or unable to help if they stumble across crime afterhours.

Because of increasing unease and last week’s anti-terror raids, police in Belgium are again allowed to carry weapons home rather than put their handguns and munition in specialized lockers.

“The conditions we have now are clearly exceptional,” said Fons Bastiaenssens, a police spokesman in Antwerp, where there are many potential targets.

In addition, firearms suddenly became far more visible, with some police carrying heavier weaponry as they guard sensitive buildings and police offices, and paratroopers in the streets of the major cities.

In Britain, the overall threat level is “severe” — meaning intelligence and police officials have evidence that a terrorist attack is highly likely.

The threat to police officers themselves is judged to be very high after the Paris attacks as well as the recent disruption of a reported Islamist extremist plot to attack individual police officers in west London.

In response, the Metropolitan Police said Sunday it is bolstering the deployment of specialist firearms officers who are authorized to carry weapons.

Hate to say it London and Paris, times have changed. Your gun control laws, as usual, disarm only the law abiding citizens. So your cops have to be ready to defend the public, themselves and defeat the new threat.