Great Britain is not the only place where people are terrified at the very sight of a firearm.
When I lived in Los Angeles, my wife worked as an Exec. Assistant to the producer of a very popular teeeveee series. (Cops-'n-robbers type.) This was at one of the major film studios.
The studio production offices were in a two story building, top floor. A long hallway separated a bunch of offices on that floor. One office was occupied by a very well known screenwriter who'd written several very popular films, again, of the cops-'n-robbers type. His office was a couple of doors down the hallway from where my wife worked in her production office complex.
One night, suddenly, the screenwriter died of a massive heart attack. A couple days later, his secretary, and a couple of studio employees were in his office, cleaning out his stuff to give to his wife.
Suddenly, my wife heard this terrible scream and loud thumping in the hallway of running, shouting, both from the secretary and the two young (metrosexual) men. My wife stepped out into the hallway and asked the secretary who was screaming and near fainting, what was the matter?
The secretary and one of the young men breathlessly, fearfully said, "There's a gun in there! In his desk! A real gun! Should we call Security?! The police?! What can we do? I'm scared!"
My wife said, "Let me see." She went into the late writer's office and sure enough, in a top desk drawer which had been locked but pried open by the people, was a holstered, loaded, old style Colt's Detective Special .38 Spec.
My wife picked it up, unloaded it, put it back in the holster and then into the box filled with the writer's other effects. The secretary almost swooned when she saw my wife expertly, safely unload the Colt's. My wife said, "When Mrs. xxxx comes to pick up these things this afternoon, tell her I have the ammunition and send her to my office and I'll give it to her." The writer's wife later picked up the stuff and thanked my wife for taking care of the ammo, etc.
My wife told me she had never seen anyone as scared as that secretary and the two young men, when they saw that holstered revolver lying in that desk drawer. We got quite a laugh from it.
I had a friend, another writer, (now deceased) who had spent some years after his Army service as a U.S. Attorney and with a branch of the U.S. State Dept., investigating certain criminal incidents relating to U.S. security, overseas. Worked in Berlin, France, and Italy. (This was when the Cold War was not nearly as "cold" as many people thought.) He always carried a handgun, even though he was no longer working for the gubmint, and had become a professional screenwriter.
One day, he and his agent were at one of the teeeveee networks in L.A., pitching a teevee series idea, when something came up about a simple technical aspect of a handgun. The network exec, a woman, her female assistant, and a young man didn't understand what my friend was talking about. So he pushed back his jacket, pulled out a Browning Hi-Power, and pointed at the safety saying, "Like this one on here..."
He told me the woman screamed, started crying she was so frightened, the female assistant was screaming in terror, and the male ran out of the office. He said he got a pretty good laugh from that.
I asked him if he sold the series idea? He said, "Hell no. That network exec never wanted to see me again!"
So.... as I said, fear of firearms ain't restricted just to the British. Same thing happens here.
FWIW.
L.W.
Um, no, actually this is just a... um, training gun, yeah thats it!
