Deploy a Force Firearms Unit.

Every Force in the UK has Armed Response Vehicles. They patrol 24/7 to respond to any incidents involving weapons. Back in 1987, in a place called Hungerford, Michael Ryan went on a rampage shooting dead some 14 people as he roamed around the town. It took too long to locate him, because the lack of suitably trained officers to look for him. We even attended from London around 70 miles away, because we had fully armoured vehicles.

Since then Armed Patrols have been in existence. Most carry MP5's or G36c plus handguns. Some carry rifles and shotguns too. Depends which police force it is. The cars are two man crewed, but 3 in London. Add to that most forces have a SWAT style firearms unit in addition to the ARV's, that can be deployed at short notice.

London has 6 x 12 man teams, two on duty at any one time, available to respond. The teams not on active duty are either training or off duty. However they carry Pagers and can be recalled at any time, should the need arise. Add to the SFO Teams another 40 officers that are Counter Sniper Trained, that can be called out. Also all the Instructors (60 ish) are dual rolled and can also deploy if needed.

Here in America, when there is an active shooter scenario we send in 3 to 4 and, go hunting it you will. After Columbine we realised it is not always prudent to wait for SWAT. I was curious how you would respond due to lack of odfficers with firearms there.

That's my point though. We don't have a lack of firearms officers. The Armed Response Vehicles would attend and deal with the incident. That's their role, they don't deal with anything else.

Lack of officers if everyone was able to pack. Thankfully, in this country, very few people carry firearms, and those that are doing so illegally usually are pysched out of going rampaging as it's not everyday they see several ARVs pulling up and armed police jumping out.

At any rate, our police can respond to such istances, but the actual number of active shooters we have are so low... most of our gun crime is limited to major cities (where the number of AFOs are larger) and is usually a single person being shot late at night / early hours whereby when that person is found, the event took place hours prior.