[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...)