The British people long ago gave up their natural right to own firearms, and are now fearful that they may stand nearly defenseless against homegrown Muslim terrorists armed with obsolete Cold War-era submachine gun:

Fears of a Tunisian style attack on the streets of Britain have been raised after it emerged that criminal gangs have been smuggling powerful submachine guns into the country.

Security chiefs are concerned that the weapons, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute, could fall into the hands of would be jihadists.

A report from the National Crime Agency (NCA) published last week into serious and organised crime in the UK, found evidence of an “increased threat” of Czech made Skorpion submachine guns being imported into the UK by street gangs in London and the south east.

The fear is that these weapons could then find their way into the hands of extremists, intent on carrying out a terror attack.

There isn’t apparently any direct evidence that any terror cells have acquired Skorpions, but more a general fear that if they do acquire some of the weapons criminal gangs are sneaking into the country, that a Mumbai-style attack is possible. In that 2008 attack in similarly disarmed India, ten Islamic terrorists slaughtered at least 164 and wounded hundreds more over the course of a four-day assault.

A better planned and more dispersed series of hit-and-run attacks happening over time in separate locations around London could bring the city of more than eight million to a standstill and cause untold economic damage.

As a small arm, the Skorpion isn’t particularly impressive on the modern stage. It’s a very interesting arm for its day (a half-century ago), but fires an anemic .32 ACP round from a relatively small 20-round magazine and has limited practical range. American police wearing standard issue soft body armor equipped with now-ubiquitous AR-15 patrol rifles would be more than a match for Skorpion-armed terrorists, and concealed carriers or other citizens near the scene of an attack could bring fire to bear with their personal arms, as they did to pin down the deranged murderer during the infamous University of Texas Tower shootings in 1966.

Unfortunately for Britons,  the bobbies of the Metropolitan Police prefer to remain unarmed. While firearms-equipped police do exist in London, they are on-call units that respond to specific threats once threats have been identified and fixed, a significant problem if there are simultaneous attacks at various locations competing for attention.

Let’s hope for the sake of our friends in England that their collective decision to trade away their right to self-defense doesn’t come back to haunt them.