
Nice catch Damian!
Everyone should know to consult The Register for such calculations.
The BBC has made an audacious if flawed bid to establish the "coachload of terrorists" as a standard for quantifying arms caches. Back in 2014, Suffolk police found an impressive 177 rifles, 136 handguns, 88 shotguns and 38 machine guns, plus 200,000 rounds of ammunition at the home of James Arnold. So impressive was the …
Hell, that many guns would be my block in my neighborhood alone.
Although, I do admit, we have over half the houses on the block with multiple hunters who hunt year-round and everything from squirrels to Elk and Moose. Yes. . .they hunt Moose and Squirrel. . . .
(Note: I've NEVER been to a neighborhood potluck without at LEAST three game dishes. )
Presumably, they were aiming at a high figure, so with 439 weapons, if "enough" is defined as one weapon per terrorist, ten coachloads must hold 440 or more people, but nine coachloads 439 or fewer. So a coach can have no less than 44 seats, and no more than 48 seats.
However, looking this up, it seems that there were 56 seats on a British Railways Mark I carriage.
So those weapons would only be enough to arm every terrorist in seven coachloads!
Coaches in the UK have 52 passenger seats unless otherwise stated. If there is accommodation for a wheelchair user, the number will be closer to 48. One or two seats may be reserved for tour guides. (consult anyone with a PSV licence).
I am not sure if terrorists need tour guides and I presume the BBC does not know either.
And that's assuming you don't double up on rifle/pistol which is a really silly assumption. I'll grant the machine guns are the tough part of the calculation as they vary in size. I'm assuming they're using the military LMG as opposed to a decent HMG or what passes for a machine gun in Hollywood flick these days.
There is an alternative measure for this magnitude of weaponry - the number of Arnold Schwarzenegger action characters. For 500 or so guns and a quarter of a million rounds of ammo, the value in Arnies would be around 1.
I was going to suggest using Chuck Norris - but there aren't that many guns in the world.
Surely it isn't only necessary to define the coach load, it is also necessary to define the standard unit terr'ist. I believe this should be defined as equivalent to two pistols, one semi automatic and a vest / rucksack. Half a terr'ist is equal to one shoe.
On this basis, I'd argue that there's only one busload in this stash.
Let's see, at 54 passengers per coach, one weapon apiece, that's 8 coaches, as the ninth coach really would only have a few terrorists on it, so never mind it, really. But really, you'd have 303 armed terrorists, because you'd have a primary and a secondary weapon. So that's six coaches, with some room to spare.
But of course the real terrorists don't have weapons. They pass laws...
But what is the equivalent in mars bars ?
Or blue whales for that matter ?
I won't be able to sleep now, this has just ruined my weekend.
Ruined !
Happy now ?
My nightmare of a blue whale full of terrorists armed with thousands of mars bars is coming true and all you can do is laugh and point!
That's actually pretty civilised.
Try riding a bus in the backwoods of Mexico or Colombia (would probably apply to all of Middle and South America, but these I know from experience). But then you need to add a conversion factor from pigs, chickens and other livestock to passengers annex terrrrists..
Ah well, that explains it. If it was Suffolk. Then obviously all the terrorists would need to bring their wives and mothers. That's one woman per terrorist...
Actually, being Suffolk, there's bound to be several per woman, so that's why all the calcs come out with 6 coaches worth of armed nutters. The other 3 coaches are for their womenfolk.
Now we just have to work out how to apportion the number of fingers to a coach...
Plus, shouldn't it be number of tractor loads of terrorists anyway?
[in my best Emily Latella voice]
What's all this I hear about arming coachloads of tourists? It's discgracful. That sounds like something that you'd hear about in Texas, not the UK! Sign up now for the 7-day fall coach tour sponsored by the local senior center -- every ticket includes meals, nightly lodging, a semi-automatic assault rifle, two sidearms, and 3500 rounds of ammunition!
What? Terrorists?
Oh.
That's different.
Never mind....
[Hostly, I mis-read "terrorist" as "tourist" multiple times while trying to figure out in what context outside of Texas coachloads of armed tourists made sense.]
"The BBC just quoted the Detective in charge who made that comparison with coach loads of terrorists." -- Michael B.
If only journalists had some other function than simply repeating what they were told! But the most one appears to be able to hope for these days is that they will try to achieve "balance" by repeating what they are told from people with alternative viewpoints. The idea of actually trying to find out which viewpoint might be closer to the objective truth now appears a quaint notion fading rapidly into the mist of the past.
> The idea of actually trying to find out which viewpoint might be closer to the objective truth now appears a quaint notion fading rapidly into the mist of the past.
The objective truth is the number of weapons of different types that were recovered, as given in all coverage of the story. Reports also published pictures of the weapons that were recovered.
That the policeman said "nine coachloads", is also a fact.
What is just plain false is that "nine coachloads" was concocted by the BBC.
Whilst John H Woods' point that they [journalists] will try to achieve "balance" by repeating what they are told from people with alternative viewpoints. is an important point in general, I fail to see its relevance in this case.
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Dave 126 you are correct that my point about balance is not relevant here but only because you have shorn it of its context, as an adjoinder to a point that was (the complaint that journalism is increasingly uncritical repetition devoid of analysis).
It is ironic that you have done so because the essence of my original point was the importance of context. It may be perfectly correct to report that "100kg of lead was stolen from the roof of St Mary's, which the vicar noted was enough to poison the local reservoir." It's factually accurate, and amusingly the danger is actually more real: the lead is still at large! But, reported like this, it is just alarmist nonsense.
For the context of comments above, it seems that in the UK coach refers to a small train car as opposed to a decent bus. Here in the US, assuming you can find a a passenger car, it would likewise be insufficient for more than two cars and that's assuming the absurdity of one weapon per terrorist.
The BBC writing an article on guns abandons sense, next you will tell me a tale of what bears do in woods. I am amused that nothing bad happened nor seemed destined to so the hypothetical 'what if the terrorists got em' must have been written to pretend there was much going on. It is interesting that some pieces will be kept for historical value for museums.
Sounds like he got to enjoy his hobby up until the last 3 months of his life where he was arrested for it.
Oh, don't I wish. While I've got an SKS for general plinking and a Makarov for HD, in addition to the bog-standard bolt-action .22, a lever-action .357 that I hunted deer with when I was a kid, and a break-action single-shot 20-gauge, my dream gun list is massive.
I want a Mateba, and failing that, a Rhino - because both have some fascinating design principles, the Mateba especially. An AK variant, mostly just because. An FN FAL, because I don't have anything high-calibre. An SVD, because it's a gorgeous firearm (but sadly, impossible to import), a semi-auto shotgun because those are a joy at the range (a Saiga would be perfect), and a Calico, because it looks like a space gun and the sheer existence of a firearm with a minimum capacity of 50 rounds is a wonderful thought.
All of this is also assuming that the NFA is here to stay; the list will grow significantly if some of the more idiotic restrictions are repealed.
t. American
I was a guard commander one night in Pretoria, South Africa, when there was some gunfire outside that I needed to investigate.
As commander I did not have a weapon assigned to me, so I took one off the rack. I had a choice of an R1/FAL (pretty much == SLR) in 7.62x51, an R4 (South African copy of a Galil in 5.56) or an Uzi 9mm.
I grabbed the R1.
Since then my centrefire rifle of choice has been .308.
These tourists, sorry, terrists will get nowhere just lugging a load of guns and ammo around!
Where are the deadly, fully encrypted smart phones and laptops that our governments are warning us about nowadays?
Afterall the nine coaches will have to be able to communicate securely to choreograph their attacks properly.
Beware of charabancs full of men singing 'Oh I do like to be beside the seaside with strong accents.
@ John H Woods
648 by my reckoning
Only 2 off the number of (Dis?)Honourable Members of Parliament at Westminster.
I'm sure there must be a few ex terrorists, fraudsters, bigamists etcetera amongst that lot Though in the case of fraud, one cannot be so sure if the practice has stopped when one considers their expense claims.
No, you'd need 574 coaches of virgins* based on the numbers provided in this article.
Now, I expect even the Suffolk police would quickly spot a convoy of 583 coaches, so the risk here is minimal.
*As others have pointed out, this assumes you could find that many. Although I understand terrorists accept virgins down to age 8 or so, so they might have a loophole there.
>So why ... ... do the travellers have to be specifically terrorists? Why not hunters,
Hunters? Given the nature of some the weapons, (an anti-tank missile, and an uzi with a bayonette) that concept brings the Monty Python sketch Mosquito Hunting to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZvT3MHpffk
"... do the travellers have to be specifically terrorists? Why not hunters, territorial army, weapons collectors, shooting range enthusiasts, or armed police?"
Likewise, it's interesting that almost all of the jokes/comments relating to terrorists assume they are Muslims. It seems the work of various western government spin doctors is done.
> How much is 463 terrorists in freedom fighters?
There was an interesting feature on last month's Le Monde Diplomatique titled something along the lines of "When the Taliban were our friends", consisting mostly of newspaper excerpts from the eighties exalting the bravery of those noble young men and their faithful and obedient wives in the face of a foreign enemy (and their local supporters). :-)
As with most TV media, the BBC has no idea what it is talking about. Neither has the local police force that were pictured with 'The Cache' The policewoman was hold in an M72 LAW which is a 66mm anti tank weapon. it is empty and she is holding it wrongly.
As for arming X number of terrorists - rubbish......the most damage they could do with that lot would be to throw the weapons at you!
Criminals and terrorists have unfettered access to much more modern weaponry in the UK than that collection.
Actually they don't - that cache is about as up to date as it gets in terms of UK armed criminality.
We have a real and ongoing problem with (believe it or not) the lack of illegally held firearms. For donkeys' years police PR had us all worrying about a country awash with armed gangs in inner-city areas and the like, and even though the problem is relatively tiny nowadays there's too much public funding and easy PR to be had from maintaining that we're all going to die unless Something Is Constantly Done.
The truth is there's only a thousand or so illegally held guns in active criminals' hands (i.e. excluding these Hot Fuzz-style scenarios) in the whole country. Hence police wet themselves with excitement whenever they actually find any and blow it completely out of proportion – aided by the slack-jawed idiots of the generalist media who just repeat what they're told.
Much like dogs in relation to your dinner and their Pedigree Chum, British police really struggle to tell the difference between guns held by gangs and guns whose owners realistically pose little danger to the public.
"The policewoman was hold in an M72 LAW which is a 66mm anti tank weapon. it is empty and she is holding it wrongly."
To be fair, she's not actually planning to use it so being empty is reasonable and I'm not sure you can be accused of holding a weapon "wrongly" when it's just for display purposes.
Holding it "correctly" and loaded while posing for a publicly disseminated photo op might fall foul of the laws against possessing information useful to a terrorist by demonstrating how to use a weapon "correctly". (icon for this bit)
> I'm not sure you can be accused of holding a weapon "wrongly" when it's just for display purposes.
What I think the other poster implied is that when you are trained in a weapon, or class of weapons, holding it the wrong way is not just unnatural but down right unsettling.
By it being empty (and I am a) making assumptions and b) unfamiliar with this particular weapon) I assume he referred to this weapon coming pre-loaded with one round of ammunition. If the holder was not in possession of the latter, the launcher is essentially a bit of pipe and as he says, it'll hurt if they bonk you in the head with but there's little more anyone can do with it.