It is the strategy of the swatter, not the police to focus on here. In Germany they might be more cautious however there will be situations where they have to proceed immediately. So you could be swatted for drinking a beer in some Arab state (notionally) but not in Germany. Therefore the swatter has to up his game to 'they have lots of cocaine that could be flushed down the loo' or, if that does not work, the threat could be a nuclear bomb dropped on baby's head or something else that takes it up to 'swat level'.

This would not be possible if the police were to turn up unarmed, as would be the case in the UK where they would have tasers and body armour.

The UK police do make big mistakes with firearms - sometimes politically motivated mistakes to give a bigger impression of terror than there actually is. The Brazilian guy that got shot on the underground was a notorious incident, plus there were the London Riots in 2011, sparked off by a police and guns problem that went wrong.

In the UK there are firearms officers only a few minutes away in places like London, most of the police force know as much about guns as they know about Scandinavian poetry. Which is good. If the police need to get the guns out they can, there is no need for every officer to be armed. In many ways it is better, not least because only a small amount of officers have to use guns and they can dedicate the time required to be good at what they do, or the best they can be. Meanwhile, in America where every policeman, woman and dog is armed to the teeth, there is not the same level of specialisation, the whole force have to be trained to some standard that is not likely to be as good as the sharp shooters of London's police.

This also applies to equipment, in America the police force needs more guns that Europe's armies need. So are those millions of guns going to be as good as the small handful of guns owned by London's police? Say you wanted to add video recording to every gun, so it recorded black box style, to not miss anything. You could update a few hundred guns with that capability a lot easier than you could if updating a few million guns. It is not hard.

In the UK when Tony Blair was around then if you swatted someone as 'al-qaeda' then - if they had the beards right to be stereotyped - then the police would go in guns blazing. The credible threat would be bomb making, but even then it would rely on the fear of those times to be taken credibly. Plus the dark politics of the time.

The police in the UK do drugs raids at dawn - or other times of day - where there is no polite entry. You could get someone swatted for that but only if they were known to the police and actually dealing drugs on the premises could you get the full raid. Here there are no guns, they cover the exits to the premises and then use the 'big key' to break down the front door. The goal is to then make sure they can get the drugs before they are hidden/disposed. Guns are not needed for this even though guns definitely exist in the world of class 'A' drugs. The police do have their riot gear on and this is partially bulletproof. Also very heavy so not operationally that convenient.

Would an American police officer have the 'bravery' to burst down a house and go in unarmed, i.e. not gun first? There is a thought.