I've found two weapon shops and one armor shop (in the same city as one of the weapon shops) so far, and I haven't been visiting towns a lot.
DF worlds are usually pretty brutal though, so having them be a bit more prevalent would make sense. (And it would certainly be handy considering that you'll be running back to them pretty often.)
I assume that since you didn't state otherwise that both the weapon and armor shops actually sold weapons and armor, respectively? In 34.11 armor shops were always empty. It was also nearly impossible to find ammo, backpacks, and several other things I can't remember right now in shops. If you found armor in a shop, it sounds like 5133 is fixed, and you should post a comment about that on the bug tracker.
Update - I have confirmed that at least sometimes armor shops actually sell armor now. I found one shop in one city that had armor in it. To get this, I generated a medium world with mineral frequency set to maximum, and the shop I found had lots of iron (and other) armor. I will post a comment about this to the tracker.
I also found a bowyer shop which was empty, so I don't think the bug is totally fixed, but being able to buy armor at all is a major plus. I agree that the shops are a bit rare, given that in Dwarf Fortress pretty much everything is trying to kill everything else, so the need for weapons and armor is pretty high, but at least they exist now.