> We do know, if you'd care to find out, because homicide and suicide rates are significantly lower in the UK and other countries without armed police than the

> We do know, if you'd care to find out, because homicide and suicide rates are significantly lower in the UK and other countries without armed police than the US. That's not how you know anything. First of all, the vast majority of countries around the world have armed police, so there's very few samples to work with. Of course you'll have trouble finding any country with a high homicide rate where the police isn't armed, but you can easily find countries where homicides are extremely rare and police are still armed, for example Japan. Suicide is mostly cultural. Korea, a country with extremely low crime rates has a very high suicide rate. In the Philippines, police are literally executing suspects in the streets, yet the suicide rate is very low. In Syria, a war torn country, suicide is even lower than that.