We should all remember that regular police in Britain don't carry guns. The guns are carried by special units that get called in when a suspect is thought to ha

We should all remember that regular police in Britain don't carry guns. The guns are carried by special units that get called in when a suspect is thought to have a weapon. I was in London in May when 2 men attacked a British solider and beheaded him on a public street, on the south side of London. One of the men was seen to have a gun, so the regular police called for the armed police. The armed police showed up 15 minutes later. What was amazing to me (I'm a USA citizen) given the brutality of the attack, was the absolute calm with which everyone dealt with it. The public, the commentators in the media, the police, they all talked about the incident in a reasonable way, noting that tragedy can not be banned from human life. There were no calls for suspending civil liberties so as to keep the public safe. It was one of those moments when I realized how far my own country had wandered from its supposed commitment to freedom. Also worth noting, the 2 attackers spoke to various bystanders, before the police arrived. Several bystanders captured the scene on their cell phone videos. The attackers repeated rhetoric that was Islamist in nature, and they used rhetorical flourishes that, I later read, had similarities to some Al Qaeda propaganda. Despite that, the media was restrained in its treatment of the religious/terrorist angle. There may, at some point in the future, be a similar attack in the USA, where some men espousing a radical Islamist view kill an American soldier. I doubt the political reaction will be as calm in the USA as it was in Britain.