An armed police force will deter criminal behaviour  Most countries in Europe and North America have armed police forces, in part to deter criminal acts, but also to protect officers working in an armed or dangerous environment’ . Armed criminals operate in at least some areas of virtually every jurisdiction. Given this reality, a failure to routinely arm the police gives armed criminals a strong advantage in terms of their ability to threaten and commit violence, without any corresponding risk to themselves. [1] In Bristol in England where police are not routinely armed the deployment of armed police in inner-city areas in 2003 defused gang tensions and reduced crime enough to allow the armed police to be withdrawn again. [2] Only putting armed police in for brief periods will only have a short term impact, having permanently armed police is the only way to keep this deterrence in effect. A world-wide ‘meta-study’ of armed police patrols found some evidence that in high violence areas, targeted armed police patrols could chill down the tensions and reassure the community but the evidence was not very compelling and the authors acknowledged that such a ‘sticking plaster’ approach was no long term solution to urban violence [3] .  [1] Kopel, David B., ed., Guns: Who Should Have Them, Prometheus Books, 1995.  [2] BBC News, ‘Armed police patrols withdrawn’, 7 February 2003,  accessed 20 September 2011  [3] Koper, C.S. and Mayo-Williams E. (2006) Police crackdowns on illegal gun carrying: a systematic review of their impact on gun crime. Journal of Experimental Criminology Vol. 2 pp. 227-261.