HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, excuse this unseemly outburst of mirth but this column has just been informed that the Metropolitan Police has announced it is to boost its numbers of firearms cops by a quarter, “to protect the public.”

That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.

The Met protecting the public?

Who’s going to protect the public from them?

Yes that’s right, in the wake of the Paris attacks David Cameron and his cronies, who until a few weeks ago seemed hell-bent on disbanding the Met in all but name, now want to give more of them automatic weapons and effectively a licence to kill.

One can only hope that a few of them still bear a grudge.

Not that the sudden apparent lack of trained marksmen has ever stopped them in the past.

The Met were happily killing innocent civilians when no-one had guns.

Blair Peach anybody? He was beaten to death on an anti-racism rally by an SPG (Special Patrol Group) cop, probably with a walkie-talkie, but since the investigation was shelved we will likely never know.

When the internal Cass investigation raided the SPG’s lockers they found knives, daggers, coshes and in one case a full-on shrine to the Third Reich, which gives you a fair idea of the type of law enforcement they were involved in.

Or what about Harry Stanley, a Scot minding his own business who called in for a pint at a London pub and after a “tip-off” by some “helpful” member of the public who described him as Irish and carrying what looked like a gun, was shot repeatedly in the back by two firearms cops.

The suspicious package he was carrying? A table leg that he had just had repaired.

Far from being prosecuted, one of the cops was promoted and the other reassigned to, and here words fail me, a position as a firearms instructor for the Met.

You have to wonder how those seminars went.

“So, if you’re trying to kill someone for no reason and want to get away with it, what you do is…”

The excuse for this further paramilitarisation of our constabulary is the threat from Islamic State (IS) following the Paris attacks.

Now, without wishing to be flippant about the appalling massacre across the Channel, by my reckoning the Met have killed far more innocent people in London than Isis has.

They even look similar, head to toe in black, balaclava’d, brandishing automatic weapons and wearing bulky vests festooned with lethal items.

The cops’ response was as usual nothing but predictable in its hypocrisy and amounted to, basically: “We are proud to be the only unarmed police force in the world, now give us the guns.”

Followed by assurances that those trained in their use were subject to “rigorous” testing.

Hmm, by cops such as the one who murdered Stanley you mean?

Let us not forget that it was “highly trained” firearms cops who gunned down a completely innocent Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes, apparently due to a case of mistaken identity, and whose superiors then tried to cover it up by lying through their teeth.

The Met’s official statements in the immediate aftermath of the execution — because that’s what it was, make no mistake about it — claimed: “He was acting suspiciously.” No he wasn’t.

“He jumped the turn-style.” No he didn’t.

“He was wearing a suspiciously bulky coat.” No he wasn’t.

“He ran when police identified themselves.” He didn’t because they didn’t.

Instead they stormed a Tube train totally unannounced and shot him seven times in the head with hollow-point bullets — for no reason whatsoever other than he was slightly swarthy and therefore in their limited imaginations might have been a Muslim.

Despite the glaring hypocrisy and guilt of those involved, De Menezes’s murder was eventually classed as a health and safety issue.

Well that’s one way of putting it.

They then tried to claim he was an illegal immigrant, as if that mitigated their actions. Surprise, surprise… he wasn’t.

And these are the perjuring psychopaths they want to arm to the teeth?!

You might as well deputise the Kray and Richardson gangs.

To give you a flavour of what we can expect from our elected, and unelected, representatives when the new, “improved” tooled-up Met comes into being, the force is already pushing for immunity in all cases of fatal shootings.

Which is a joke in itself, they already get away with murder with total impunity.

How many cops have been convicted of unlawful killings over the years?

The answer is, none.

Juries are routinely told they are not allowed to bring verdicts of unlawful death in the case of state killings.

And it looks like the cops will get their carte blanche if this week’s scenes in the House of Lords are anything to go by.

Peers went into full-on outrage mode, which is the same as usual but with more jowl-shaking and even damper seats, decrying the human rights lawyers attempting to prosecute squaddies in Iraq and Afghanistan for abuse, torture and murder as an “outrage.”

The argument, such as it is, is that if squaddies face prosecution for killing and brutalising innocent people it might stop them doing it.

Yes, and?

To you, M’Lords and Ladies, I have only one response. You have apparently, in your befuddled and jingoistic minds, decided that the murder of Basra hotelier Baha Mousa, who died after suffering all five of the allegedly banned interrogation techniques at the hands of these “brave young boys” and whose body bore 93 separate injuries, and countless others, should be brushed under the carpet as an embarrassing blemish on the reputation of this nation.

You are the embarrassments and when the Met get hold of even more guns and kill the next innocent civilian maybe you will realise that it is you who are the problem.

Somehow, though, I doubt it.