Throughout Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon of Sherlock Holme’s adventures, recounted by Holme’s faithful diarist John H. Watson, we see a gun, a revolver or a pistol being used as a means to protect the protagonists when things get dodgy. This was England in 1889. Over 100 years later England is a different place in many ways, and some would say on its way to Utopia. What advice do English police give their fellow citizens, and aspiring “consulting detectives”, in 2015? Read, and weep, and then move to North America.

https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q589.htm