[hga]

The reason the military personnel carried unloaded weapons is that commanding officers live in fear of an negligent discharge ending their career, this was true for most base sentries before and after 9/11, you can pretty much only count on those guarding nuclear weapons to have rounds in their weapons. "Nothing personal".

As for police carrying rifles/carbines in our airports today, well, they're much better weapons than pistols, more accurate and more likely to hit the target and not an innocent, much harder hitting if they have the right ammo in them, all police should have a "patrol carbine" instead of a shotgun in their trunk or secured in the passenger space of their vehicles.

The only question here, is the threat level at the airport high enough that routinely carrying rifles is warranted? That I can't say, but as noted by others, it's routine in more "civilized" Europe.

[Zigurd]

In Europe, it depends on the cop: Traffic cops are often unarmed schlubs. Federal police are armed and well-trained. China also seems to have multiple tiers of cops and relatively few are carrying guns in public.