Did a school exchange with Serbia once (am German myself). The abundance of guns was jarring, I was welcomed to a night club by a couple armed bouncers, one of them open carrying a fucking ak-47.
Those mfs thought it hilarious to put a gun in my jacket during the security check, it was totally surreal being yelled at and held at gun point, even though they were just fucking with me.
I remember after 9/11 I took a flight out of Minneapolis and there were security/police/whatever with automatic rifles. Pretty surprising as I'd never seen anything like that in the US.