What do you expect from a country whose police officers are wearing ballistic style vests but no firearms for protection and citizens cannot carry weapons for proctection? See picture above.
That is a multi-threat jacket: good against both knives and bullets. As you might imagine policemen in the UK face a lot of knives and very few guns.
“police officers are wearing ballistic style vests”
Not just ballistic vests, they are specially constructed to resist knife attacks. Most people don’t know that standard ballistic vests only resist bullets and blunt trauma. Pointy objects go through the weave of standard vests easily. Ice picks and narrow knife blades will punch a vest unless its specially constructed to resist those point punctures.
The Brits are flat crazy. They have given up almost all freedom and gotten little security in return.