What's Up With All The Guns, or Warsaw: Gangsta City

Something the uninitiated western visitor to Warsaw might ask, after spending a bit of time touring around the city, is “What’s up with all the guns?” Within a couple of days of arriving, I noticed that in front of several government buildings, there are police stationed 24/7 carrying automatic weapons, as if they anticipated an imminent insurrection of some kind. Is Warsaw under martial law, one might think. No, that’s just the way things are here. Call it a carry-over from the communist period or whatever, but in Poland, public security is serious business.

I’ve visited many major capitals around the world, including Washington, D.C., but I must say, I’ve never seen such a strongly armed, at-the-ready police presence as I have in Warsaw.

If you want to check it out for yourself, talk a walk along Al. Ujazdowskie in central Warsaw, where a lot of embassies are located, including those of Britain, the U.S., and Switzerland. In addition to their own security personnel, you’ll see police standing outside the gates on the street with their automatic weapons of choice.

First, let me say that I’ve never owned a gun, nor have I even fired a weapon in my life. And although I appreciate the need to preserve the peace, I know that this sort of thing would generate a huge public outcry if it was implemented on the streets of any Canadian, American or western European city.

That being said, I was nonetheless curious to find out what kind of gun it was I’d seen. After inquiring to a couple of Polish friends, I found out that the weapon of choice I’d described is the pistolet maszynowy wz.63 (or, PM-63), also known as a RAK, short for Reczny Automat Komandosow (hand-held automatic commando weapon) invented in 1963 by a famous Polish gun designer named Peter Wilniewczyc. According to http://www.wikipedia.com/: “The wz. 63 RAK is a Polish submachine gun. It is a personal weapon intended for combat and self-defence at ranges up to 150 m with single shot or fully automatic fire mode. It is designed for the armament of heavy combat equipment crews… special anti-terrorist and police troops.”

According to the stats I saw, this weapon is capable of firing 650 rounds per minute! That’s right— 650 rounds per minute.

So next time you’re cruising around Warsaw and see some police officers in front of a building sporting their RAKs, remember to be polite, and above all, don’t do anything to startle them. And if you see a female police officer, don’t even think about saying “Hey, nice RAK you’ve got there.”

For further information, check out the following wikipedia link at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PM-63_Rak

Thanks to www.wikipedia.com for allowing the reproduction of the image featured above.