1. Introduction

In the modern State, police are the sole agents of authorised violence. Many other agencies and services are vital to a society’s well-being, but underpinning all of them is the police, who have both the right and the duty to use violence, up to and including lethal force, on behalf of the community as a whole. The use of force by police is one of the most important issues facing any community. You might then expect that there would be detailed and exhaustive studies of the police use of firearms, and the implications of arming police for the safety of police and the community. However, this is not the case. There is rhetoric aplenty, from both opponents of and advocates for routinely armed police, but almost no empirically informed evidence. In this introduction, we set the scene for the detailed exploration of the theory and practice of police use of force, and especially the use of firearms, which makes up this book. We outline the structure and briefly summarise each chapter, and also explain the “American paradox”: why this book examines influential American models of policing, both in scholarship and popular culture, but does not contain a US case study.