#LawEnforcement

Poland’s Prison Service, Służba Więzienna, are set to purchase 500 Mossberg shotguns. The contract was announced 21 November and will see the Służba Więzienna receive new Mosberg 500 shotguns.

Norway’s Police Service (Politi) are set to release a tender for just under 1,000 new pistols to equip their specialist armed response unit.

At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, Korean optics maker DI Optical was showing off many of their familiar products, but also had on display an interesting looking rifle attachment from a company called Jammer Korea. The attachment, named the “DRONE SNIPER”, is a familiar multi-frequency radio jammer, but in a slick underbarrel package that weighs much less than current standalone launchers.

An interesting 19th century revolver turned up during a Police raid in Liverpool, UK. The revolver has a tip up break action and appears to be styled similarly to the Webley-Pryse cartridge revolvers of the 1870s-80s with an octagonal barrel.

The Department of Homeland Security’s United States Secret Service Has released a Request for Proposals solicitation for a new 5.56x45mm carbine.

Officers of the Spokane Police Department are set to be issued suppressors for their patrol rifles. The Department says the move is an effort to protect officers and civilian bystanders’ hearing. Spokane PD will equip all 181 of their patrol rifles with Gemtech suppressors in a contract worth $115,202 recently signed off by Spokane’s City Council. This marks the first time a police department has deployed suppressors across all its patrol rifles.

The armed wing of London’s Metropolitan Police have submitted plans for a new £50 million base in Limehouse in the east of the capital.

It has emerged that the UK’s Ministry of Defence Police have failed to meet firearms training standards. The specialist non-military police force is tasked with protecting sites of national importance such as the Royal Navy’s base at Faslane, Scotland – the home of Britain’s Trident nuclear arsenal.

A post by Facebook’s Tap Rack Bang on Thursday shows a pistol cartridge allegedly inserted into the buttstock of a Winchester 1200 or 1300 shotgun. The true intention or mishap isn’t yet known, but the incident was allegedly reported to BATFE and a local police department. The original incident reportedly took place the second week of September.

Technology research and development company Battelle has announced the second generation of its DroneDefender anti-drone weapon. First released in 2015, the DroneDefender’s initial configuration appeared to be essentially a radio jamming apparatus attached to an AR-15 chassis sans barrel. The V2 introduces a new external design, streamlined jamming apparatus, and integrated electronics. Battelle released a product video for the DroneDefender V2, embedded below:

The French National Police and Gendarmerie Nationale law enforcement branches have recently posted a solicitation for a submachine gun chambered for a 9x19mm Parabellum round. The solicitation was placed on Boamp.com, a French government run contract posting website. Specifically (as much as Google Translate will tell), the solicitation is for an entire suite of carbines, specifying 2000 submachine guns, 600 “training” replicas, blank firing adaptors, training devices, and interestingly enough, suppressors.

Can a computer pick out and identify guns directly from video footage, without the aid of a human? That’s the technology being demonstrated by a program at the Spanish University of Granada, which earlier this year released a video purporting to show an computer artificial intelligence doing just that. You can see this technology in action in the video released by the University, embedded below:

Recently, I wrote  an article about one negative aspect of bullpups which is caused by their much-touted rearward balance. Even though its scope was extremely limited, this article caused a lot of discontent in my comments section, and many of my readers expressed a feeling that I was trying to slam bullpups or otherwise promote conventional rifles as the ideal weapons. In this post, therefore, I wanted to address the underlying issue behind this: How do I really feel about bullpups? Put differently, which do I think is better, bullpups, or conventionals?

Honor Defense announced the company was now offering two new “Honor Guard versions specifically designed for backup and off duty use by police personnel.” The company was careful to note that while these guns were built based on requests from law enforcement officers, the guns will be available for commercial sales.

The bullpup rifle tends to be – when it comes up – a pretty divisive subject among “tactical” rifle shooters. Bullpup detractors dismiss the layout as clunky and awkward, while its proponents cite the advantage of longer barrels and shorter overall lengths. Both camps are often correct in their criticism, but there is another aspect of the bullpup that I think often goes poorly addressed – if it is addressed at all. That is the subject of balance.