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The Queen's Guard are not there just for tourists to gawk at.

(The Associated Press)

Tourists can't help themselves when they're in London. They watch the Queen's Guard in their fluffy, oversized helmets, marching and stamping outside Buckingham Palace like cartoon characters, and they titter and even imitate them. This is a bad idea.

The Queen's Guard are not there just for show. They're real soldiers with a proud tradition. And they don't really take kindly to mocking tourists.

"Get back from the Queen's Guard!" one bellowed this week at a tourist who reached out to pat him as if he were a house cat. Video of the incident has gone viral throughout Great Britain, and the British Defense Ministry has made clear that the guard did nothing wrong.

As he screamed in the tourist's face, the soldier snapped his rifle off his shoulder and leveled it at the man. The tourist immediately bolted -- out of the frame and probably back to his hotel to change his pants. (Watch the video below.)

This was not a one-off. In another video on YouTube, a Guard pointed his gun at tourists who were climbing on a nearby fence. "Stay off the fence!" he yelled, looking very much like he was considering a warning shot. And earlier this month, at Pall Mall in London, a camera-wielding man named Gerry Weatherhead learned that the Queen's Guard don't move out of the way for tourists; tourists move out of the way of the Guard. "Make way!" the soldiers bellowed as they marched right over Weatherhead.

"I was handing the camera to my wife so I could go to the gents' and, next minute, wallop!" he later told Britain's the Evening Standard.

As Weatherhead tried to regain his senses after being knocked sideways by the Guard, a woman on the video can be heard muttering, "Stupid man."

Weatherhead, at least, has learned his lesson. He insisted, "It won't happen twice."

-- Douglas Perry

More Queen's Guard video: