http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/201...al-in-2011?lite

I wonder how many bullets the police in the UK used in the same period of time, not a lot I am guessing.

These figures are for the number of incidents in England and Wales where police discharged firearms (not the actual number of bullets fired). The period reported is April to March.

2001/2002 11

2002/2003 10

2003/2004 4

2004/2005 5

2005/2006 9

2006/2007 3

2007/2008 7

2008/2009 5

2009/2010 6

Oddly enough, there's a footnote to say that these figures don't include training sessions!

You have to love us Brits.

Oh for the good old days of 2006/7!

Tragically, one of the 9 incidents in 2005/2006 included the 7 shots in the head (and one in the shoulder) inflicted on poor Jean Charles de Menezes.

That was tragic. One wonders how many innocent people were killed in other countries by police if the Brits managed with over ten percent.

Indeed. Although those 9 shooting incidents in 2005/2006 resulted in another 5 separate deaths that year (in addition to Jean Charles de Menezes). Disturbingly, at least two of them involved individuals with severe mental health problems, who were not 'criminals' in the normal sense of that term. So while it's true (welcomely so) that police in England and Wales are inevitably less involved in shootings because they're not routinely armed, I'm not sure there's much difference in outcome between them and police elsewhere when armed police are deployed.