And I advocate for police not carying guns. They don't need them. No one else in society needs them during normal interactions. They should be reserved for the swat team and only used for that level of situation. A regular police officer's only job should be to give tickets and directions - and those interactions don't seem very dangerous.
Why not? This works great in other countries...
I'm Norwegian and I live in the UK, and while I think the US would have been in a much better place if the US had followed a similar policy a long time ago ("US conditions" is a standing term in Norwegian politics used to scare voters - almost nobody wants "US conditions" in almost any context), I still think the US would find it extremely hard to introduce such a policy now.
It works in Norway and the UK for a number of reasons:
* Low sentences for crimes without weapons combined with huge additional sentences if using a weapon. E.g. you could easily get 4-5 years for participation in a relatively serious robbery, but risk tacking on up to 10 extra for an armed robbery.
* Criminals rarely risk meeting armed resistance. Lots of people have weapons, but the weapons law requires weapons to be stored locked down in an inoperable state (so detach a part and lock it down in a different location).
* Criminals know very well that if they are reported to be likely to be armed, they will face a large manhunt with armed police, while if they don't carry a weapon anyone coming after them will be hunting them without firarms.
The problem with introducing this elsewhere is that you have an existing situation where criminals have a strong incentive to arms themselves, which in turn maintains a strong incentive for other people and police to be armed. Changing that around without the risk of a lot of harm in the process would be incredibly challenging.