Tuesday 13 May 2008

Armed Police at Dungeness:

I visited Dungeness today to have a look at the power station and have a look at an interesting little house being built by an interesting architect.I would love to live there as its a fascinating place and a completely unique enviroment.I dont know what the planning criteria is as most of the little houses are substandard prefabs dressed up to look like a park home and i would demolish any one of them and replace it with a newbuild that would be ten times better than the existing.The power station is stunning at night when it is lit up as well.I have always liked the design of the main reactor building as well.


Anyway i couldnt help but notice the 2 armed police that were wandering around.They were armed with the Heckler and Koch G36 Assault Rifles which have a range of half a mile and can fire 750 rounds per minute and the rounds can pierce body armour.so in other words you dont want to get hit by a round from this gun as it will make an awful mess.You wouldnt know it anyway if it did hit you.They looked like guns that were fresh out of the box they came in and they have only just been issued [about 2 weeks ago] they were black in colour and are a substantial piece of kit.Police maintaining security at "at risk from terrorism" buildings and installations are the only police permitted to use these type of firearms as they are far more deadly than standard police issue firearms.The police are apparently only trained to use these guns in single shot or triple shot fire mode and not on automatic which is a stupid thing to say because if you are trained to fire this gun on single or triple fire mode then whats diferent about being trained to fire it on automatic ?You just hold it ,aim and fire - simple.


Stupid.

Anyway providing the mechanism is reliable and doesnt lock up or whatever then its fine apart from the gun getting very very hot after firing 750 rounds per minute so its probably sensible to wait a minute or 2 before reloading and firing.Its only 30 rounds per magazine anyway.


Apart from that the 2 police were well away from the power station and just seemed to be wandering around so if anything did happen then they would be nowhere near it.


Serious firearms though that would stop virtually anything.I dont know what size of round is used but judging by the size of the barrel they werent pissing around with 5.56mm rounds as these looked more like they would fire an 8 or 9 mm round at a guess.It didnt look like they had the grenade launcher attachment though .

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