Or consider that unarmed baggage handler in Glasgow who tackled a would-be suicide bomber.

You'd think one of the police who'd been escorting Jean-Charles on the bus all that way would have just stood in his way when he made to enter the station, and said "Excuse me sir, have you a few miutes to spare", to delay matters. For that matter they apparently did actually have guns, but "only for personal protection" according to the media.

In a way this tragedy happened because they were acting under a system under which the kind of personal initiative which would have been involved in doing that has been frowned upon, in favour of a fantasy about things being better done when coordinated by an operations room miles away.