Sabine (see below) is often hanging above my fireplace, or, like now, when she's poorly, lying around my lounge in some degree of disassembly. Still, I live in a flat that is the top of a pretty large house, so the only people who could see in are the neighbours, either on the other side of the road, whose house is set back on a huge rise and facing at about 30 degrees away from our side (not very likely IMO), or next door if I leave the blinds open on my side window. The thing is I very rarely open those blinds anyway, specifically because the house is let unfurnished to a constant stream of students and, for some unknown reason, the inhabitants of the 2 rooms which have windows facing directly into my lounge never yet have bothered to buy any curtains or blinds themselves. One put some cardboard over most of the window one year, but I've leant out to throw something at urban foxes before and been confronted with what some people would, no doubt, pay good money to watch online. I'm more of a doer than a watcher by nature, but there's also the embarrassment (which is admittedly not that powerful since I'm so laid back I'm almost upside down), and then there's the very real fear of major embarrassment if they should think I was some kind of peeping tom.
Agnes, my L1A1 SLR, lives in my wardrobe. Wilf, my shorty shottie, hangs by his sling on the side of a mirror that is supposed to be a temporary feature of my lounge, for the odd times I need to bother about my appearance, but through laziness has taken root near my TV. Emily, my modded mini MP5 pistol, hangs in a holster in the wardrobe too, or on the back of my bathroom door and my Palco Firepower USP, which doesn't yet have a formal name, is in a soft-ish case with some CO2 cartridges and speed-loaders in one of my bookcases in the lounge.
In the unlikely event that the old bill come round, I will simply yell at them out of the window, "Calm down! It's a fcuking airsoft gun! Reign your neck in and I'll come down and let you see my Airsoft Site Membership."
I realise that many of you, perhaps those who have served in HM Forces, or a Constabulary, more than others, may feel doubtful and think that either I wouldn't really do that, or that, if I did, things would quickly go a bit pear shaped for me. I assure you that I have had firearms pointed at me by the police before and also by criminals and at least one complete nutcase. Naturally, the first time it happened it was all I could do to stay focussed on what was being said while not losing control of my bladder.
By the time the nutcase actually jammed a full length double barrelled shotgun, which he'd been at pains to show me he was loading moments before, in my face, I knew the crack: I am helpless to prevent my instant death unless, 1) some very unlikely event happens which somehow allows me to get right up close to my antagonist before s/he can pull the trigger; or 2) I can say something in a way that takes control of the situation, either covertly by manipulation, or overtly by assertiveness. Therefore I may as well ignore the threat, because there's nothing other than keeping my head together that will save me.
Now, certainly there are nutcases in the police force, but generally speaking, whilst they are trained to dominate a situation by intimidation, and to do so they often project a cavalier attitude to the law, behind their training they are still British people who have a job, financial commitments reliant upon that job, and quite likely emotional attachments which are also partly conditional upon those financial commitments. The way to handle them is assertively. You must know at least the gist of the law regarding arrest, entry into a property without a warrant, what constitutes "threatening behaviour" as opposed to "a serious arrestable offence", and what defines "resisting arrest".
In order to completely ignore their intimidation, a good mental focus is that this is not the 70's: they are highly unlikely to do anything noisy without at least one witness who may well video the event on his/her phone and post it to You Tube or their Face Book before they can grab the phone, if they are even aware of being recorded, and they are aware of this far more acutely than you are, since they have so much to lose as a potential consequence. You must act unconcerned by them as a threat. You are in control. In fact, if you have done nothing wrong, you very much are in control. Unless they have reasonable grounds to suspect that you are committing a serious arrestable offence in your house at that very moment and the only way to stop you would be to enter your home without a warrant, they cannot come in, regardless of what they say or point at you. If you tell them you are coming to the door and do so immediately, that's the end of that.
Naturally you must keep your empty, open hands in plain sight, but, regardless of what they may shout at you, down by your sides, but out at angles away from any pockets, where they cannot be construed as threatening. You must also remain completely within your house. You then ask them, in a chatty everyday manner, over or between anything they may say, what they are there for and keep doing so until one of them answers you. That person is the one you talk to from now on; even if the one right in front of you interrupts or cross questions you. You are required to cooperate with the police in their investigations and you are doing so, "cooperate" does not mean "obey unconditionally".
If the police do turn up to your place mob handed without a warrant, you are definitely not going to get away without letting at least one of them in, unless you are also a team and "no warrant; no ingress" really means "come'n'ave a go if yer fink yer 'ard enough!" and they're not so confident about the outcome. After that use of manpower whoever is in charge really wants to justify the operation. If you won't let them in without a warrant and barging in seems like a bad idea because of potential witnesses, they'll either threaten you, your friends, or your family* with a nicking for something else, or they'll leave a few sitting there to nick you if you run, while the rest go and get one.
You just have to talk calmly with 'your' designated copper and tell him/her that you understand they've got a job to do but you haven't done anything wrong so you don't want a load of them crashing through your place freaking you out, but if s/he wants to come in and check you out, that's fine, "Bring one of your mates too, if you like; I realise you can't know I'm not a nutter yet," and laugh. In your willingness to be thought of as cooperative, friendly even, beware of losing control of the situation by allowing your designated copper to give you instructions which you obey. No matter how reasonable they may sound, you are not required to do anything other than cooperate with enquiries, which you are doing by standing there, in your house, offering no threat, answering any questions put to you by your copper. If this approach starts to get untenable, either because too many of them shout at you to get a word in edgeways, or more than one of them question to you in a reasonable manner, you need to tell your copper that you're scared of them. You'll not be lying, you will be scared. Tell that person, "Just you. I can't deal with all of you at once while I'm this frightened. I want to show you that everything is cool but, if you're all on at me, I can't think straight."
Of course that too is the truth. That is exactly why they do it. So you can't think. Then you're left with nothing but your fear of them and so you either have to run, fight, or obey them. The most important thing to remember is that "assertive" doesn't mean "hard", "tough", "Billy-big-spuds", or any other popular image of what, men in particular, behave like when they are "standing up for themselves". Nor does "I am afraid" mean "I am weak", "I'm your bitch", "I'm too cowardly to represent my best interests or defend myself", or any other popular image of what showing fear means about a person's courage. In fact it takes far more courage to tell the truth as you see it, including your feelings, and still remain focussed on what you need to happen as an outcome, and, as a separate consideration, what you want as a best case scenario.
If a person pointing a firearm clearly is a nutcase, in uniform or not, or you're not sure, take the opposite approach - make them believe they are in control. This does not mean obey them unconditionally and immediately. If you do that they will either consciously think you may be duplicitous, or unconsciously feel that something may not be quite right, and they will feel the need to demonstrate their power, to test that you really have given up. That's when you may well get a bit of a kicking, or, if they've been watching a lot of films where the hero/anti-hero says something cool before delivering a cruel blow/shot/etc, try to act out that pre-formed unconscious script of what being the winner entails and do something horrible to you.
In this situation you have to respond to each word and gesture (and notice I use "respond" not "react") compliantly with your body language and speech, but nevertheless maintain a demeanor of readiness. You bob as if about to crouch, move your arms, palms up, briefly outwards from your sides as if you're going to put your hands up, lean back away from the threat briefly and say, "Yeah, yeah.", as if you are about to obey. But all the time think wtf do they want? When you realise what it is, if it's something you are willing to give without a fight, you need to start your negotiation. Again because if you give it up too easily, they cannot help but be suspicious. You have to project "You have won for now, you are in control. However, don't upset this fragile status quo, because you are about to get what you want and who knows what might happen if you fcuk it up."
:lol: When I started this reply I had no intention of writing all this, I just found I couldn't say what I wanted to without covering the subject more fully, because to do so would have been irresponsible. Basically, if you have a valid defence to the VCR Act, you may own RIF's and, if somebody sees one in your house and freaks out, so long as you weren't displaying it in the window in a manner clearly intended to be noticed by those outside, you have done nothing wrong whatsoever and you are under no obligation to submit to armed police booting your door off and confiscating it. If you should ever find yourself having to deal with coppers whom you believe are about to break and enter your dwelling house, assault you, and burgle your dwelling house by stealing anything, which is exactly what forcing their way in through you to get at your property amounts to, if it is done without a warrant or reasonable suspicion that a serious arrestable offence is being committed inside, then you need to remember the magic words, the veritable "Close Sesame", which are "Tort of Trespass Against the Person". I'll leave that for a google adventure, because it can be misused much more readily than this info above can.
*If you have one or more children on the premises, they will threaten to arrest all of the adults and have any children taken into local authority care unless you let them do whatever they like. Bear in mind, they cannot arrest you while you are in your house and they are not unless they have a warrant to enter or bla bla, serious arrestable offence, bla, bla. Also remember that if there is nothing that can be reasonably construed as evidence of a crime inside, once they have their warrant, they may arrest one or two adults out of spite, but they will not involve child services because that creates a paper trail that will not go away.
OH SH..UGAR! PS: under no circumstances must you go to the door holding any RIF; not even say, "I'll go and get it so you can see." and make any move to do so. If it seems that just letting them see that it is an airsoft gun is going to get rid of them fastest, you'll have to invite first one, then "a mate" in and just lead them to it so they pick it up, not you. Bear in mind here that simply because you have given them permission to hold and inspect your property does not mean that they can take it anywhere else and they must put it down or give it to you as soon as you ask for it.
