Curious, as I haven't been to Europe - were these at border posts? Public transit hubs? Anything else?
Conversely if you want to see the use of the AR-15 in public artwork, you should go to Northern Ireland.
In Switzerland I once saw a conscript get on a train and put his rifle in the luggage rack exactly as if it were an umbrella. But Switzerland is different (guns are mandatory, ammunition heavily controlled, the people are the "militia" and support the government, and the whole country is a mountain fortress).