Yep, thats so true, I always found it a little unnerving every time I had visit a couple of our Atomic Weapons Establishments
The firearms or the radiation ?
Radiation would bother me more.
The firearms I imagine. The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (better known as the Nuclear Police) were the only regularly armed police in the UK until the Met decided to go for the "armed bully boys with shaved heads" look on a regular basis.
Yeah well I just don't get how some can be not scared of electricity yet they are of firearms.
Arse about IMHO.
Well, the express purpose of firearms is to kill, either for hunting or warfare. That folks like you and me use them as long distance paper punches as a form of peaceful sport has itself evolved from the need to train people to use them in warfare. The British government used to promote target shooting as a sport to have a ready supply of proficient rifleman handy in case of hostilities. Everybody is aware that a firearm is a weapon, and a weapon that one is unlikely to defend oneself from without having one oneself and being proficient in its use. One has an innate understanding that a firearm is more dangerous than a fist, rock, stick, knife or sword.
You have to put this into a context. I can go to Bisley, be surrounded by literally hundreds of firearms out in the open and small arms fire sounding off left right and centre and I have no fears for my safety whatsoever apart from the routine "
working with dangerous machines" risks and associated caution. But, if I see a policeman with a firearm in the streets my internal alarms go off.
If one sees people with weapons, be it firearms in the street, a crowd with a clutch of baseball bats outside a playing field, or a Stanley knife being carried down the street by someone who doesn't look like they are in the middle of some work, then an internal alarm goes off. If it didn't your ancestors would have been eaten by bears or tigers and you wouldn't be here. It's only in places where the open presence of firearms on a daily basis is normal that people get desensitised to the threat that a firearm represents.