[hackissimo123]

Get outside of central London (and possibly some other big cities like Birmingham? I don't know, I never go there) and you'll never see armed police anywhere. I grew up in a small British town in the Southeast and I can't think of a single time in my entire childhood that I saw a police officer with a gun (or for that matter, anyone else with a gun) anywhere near my hometown, except perhaps for my rare visits to touristic hotspots in London. And again, it's only in central London, at least as far as I can tell. I live in non-central London now (Zone 3) and I never see armed police anywhere near where I live. Come to think of it, I rarely see any police at all around here, at least not on foot.

I can remember going on holiday to France as a kid and being unable to take my eyes off the guns I saw on the hips of French police, because it was such an unusual sight for someone born and raised in middle England.

I think in the UK we're so used to the idea of unarmed police that we forget how astonishingly unusual it is. In most countries the idea of unarmed police is unimaginable. We've really achieved something special by managing it, at least in most parts of the country most of the time.