[digitalengineer]

It's also very... American to not think mention the absurdity of machine guns at airports, even in the hands of humans. Even if lethal force is required, would you want a security person (not a trained policeman) to "start blasting" and spraying bullets with a machine-gun?

[ben_w]

> It's also very... American to not think mention the absurdity of machine guns at airports

Now you mention it, despite the two respective national stereotypes, the only airports where I can remember seeing machine guns on the security team were one of the London airports.

If I saw machine guns in SFO or JFK, I was too tired from the flight to remember.

[version_five]

From what I can remember, it's an everyday occurrence in various european cities to see police armed with machine guns. The first time I saw it it was very surprising and I wondered what was going on. Definitely not a uniquely american thing.

[ben_w]

Indeed, but the UK in particular is one of the few places where police aren't routinely armed, and yet my aforementioned experience in some of the London airports…

[philipwhiuk]

The reason is that we have very few armed police and not that many police and you often (comparatively) want police with arms at an airport, so suddenly the only police at airports are the armed ones and they have the most lethal kit.

The dispatch time for armed police has gone up because they are doing a regular police job, while armed, rather than waiting for the call up.

[jstarfish]

Airport police were definitely carrying assault rifles when I was last in South Korea (2014?).

Don't remember whether it was Incheon or Gimpo.

[krageon]

Machine guns are in a lot of airports these days, in Europe as well. It is assuredly not strange anymore (though it does come across as hostile and extremely unsafe).

[kcplate]

My experience it’s far more common to see them in airports outside the US. Shortly after 9/11 it was pretty common to see heavily armed guards in the US because there was an overt military presence at that time.

What I see now is occasional police officers with their standard sidearms, but rarely see anyone more armed than that.

[philipwhiuk]

AIUI, the difference in training is not that much in the UK between sidearms and machine guns, so anyone who is certified on one probably also has the other.

Whereas in the US, every cop is armed but there's more checks on the more strict stuff.

Your airport police want to be armed but there's no need for them to be heavily armed. So in the UK they all are, because it's the same people. In the US the heavily armed folk are deployed elsewhere (SWATing someone's Twitch stream if the media tells me the truth...)

[barrkel]

I have seen assault rifles in the hands of police reasonably frequently in airports across Europe.

[raxxorraxor]

I first thought so as well but have now been desensitized by machine guns at school.

The war on terror really drove people crazy...

[Loquebantur]

Yes, measured by impact, foreign terrorism was terrifyingly successful.

The "answers" the US came up with rather exacerbated the problem. Most also don't work with homegrown terrorism at all.

Using AI to profile such potential endemic perpetrators is ironically just another instance of trying to fit the problem to the tool.

[JohnFen]

I have never seen people armed with machine guns at a US airport.

[toomuchtodo]

Houston and Nashville airport LEO have previously carried AR-15s, not sure if they still do.