Kevin Hurley, police and crime commissioner for Surrey in the United Kingdom, wrote an editorial for the Daily Mail opining UK police officers' lack of numbers and firepower:

Following the Paris massacre, the Home Secretary has been indulging in predictably tough rhetoric about beefing up Britain’s security, border controls and intelligence.

[But] The truth is that our police, especially the armed response units, remain pathetically ill-equipped and inadequate for the job of protecting the public.

When an Islamist outrage occurs on our soil, as it inevitably will, our forces may have neither the firepower nor the numbers to overwhelm the terrorists quickly before mayhem occurs.

What was striking about Paris was how effectively the well-armed French police went into action, preventing even greater carnage. Yet our officers have nothing like the same strength or weaponry.

Incredibly, there are 40 times more armed officers in France than in the UK. Nor is the equipment used by the police's armed response vehicles (ARVs) remotely adequate for the task. As we saw in Paris, the Islamist killers generally use the AK-47 Kalashnikov, an automatic machine gun that fires 7.62 millimetre rounds at a cyclical rate of 500 per minute.

The British police guns are no match. As a former police officer and soldier who served in Iraq, I know that I would not want to go into a warzone armed with the current standard weaponry issued to the police.

If we are really going to be ready for the fight, we need to stop the police cuts, develop proper response plans with the Army – and above all give armed police the weapons and numbers they need.