# Why arming all your citizens is a stupid idea. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 16, 2018, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905 "2018-02-16T00:43:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/61 "2018-02-16T22:50:17Z")
If a former infantryman with an honorable discharge, a clean record, and a clear psych evaluation, or a plainclothes police officer with SWAT training, were to be assigned to work as a security advisor and be present at the school each day, then I believe that individual has a chance at stopping a school shooter. Otherwise, I am highly skeptical. If they can work out some kind of program where that would actually be implemented, I’m OK with that. As for the odds of that happening, I am also skeptical. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/62 "2018-02-16T22:57:40Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > I’ve fired a lot of semi-automatic rifles as “rapidly” as one can fire. Yeah, I know it’s not the same as full-auto. It’s still fast enough to cause a hell of a commotion that the average citizen who is not a police officer with SWAT training or a former infantryman who has deployed, would be unable to handle. It’s not really a question of the rifle anyway. The guy who shot up Virginia Tech had two pistols. Someone who bursts into a crowded place and suddenly starts popping off rounds is going to shake up anyone to the point where they would be thrown off guard and unlikely to offer meaningful resistance. The noise alone would do it. People aren’t going to have hearing protection in, and the sound of an unsuppressed firearm inside the interior of a room would release a geyser of adrenaline. The odds of a teacher with a concealed handgun, even one who has had the kind of tactical training available to civilians, being able to keep it together under those circumstances, seem exceptionally remote to me. “even one who has had the kind of tactical training available to civilians”? Really? I think there are a bunch of Front Sight defensive handgun graduates who would beat the ass of any of the recent school shooters seven days a week. It’s not like any of them (the recent school shooters) have been “a police officer with SWAT training or a former infantryman who has deployed” either. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/63 "2018-02-16T23:06:28Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > If I give a kid some money to buy whatever he wants, and we put a gumball machine in his room. How many people honestly think he’s not going to spend his money on a gumball? Now what if we gave that same kid a .44 magnum instead. We tell him he’s only to use it to protect himself. He gets a little older and has an existential crisis. He presently wants to kill himself, in that moment he remember he has a gun. Now how many people honestly think he’s not going to kill himself? Kids like candy, suicidal people want change. The most accessible and easiest option for change is obviously killing yourself. According to statistics, that seems to be the case. Majority use of guns in house holds is not self defense, it’s suicide followed by criminal action, homicide, and unintentional shootings. > > I’m not a psychologist but I know if I have a piece of chocolate cake in my refrigerator I’m more likely to wake up in the middle of the night and go eat it, than I am to stay in bed if I had not had the cake in there in the first place. Why would this be any different for guns? The school shooting that happen recently I believe could of been avoided had that kid not have the weapon in the first place. I believe in majority of school shootings specifically, if they did not have access to a weapon they would not of committed the action. It’s a lot harder to build up the confidence to go stab all your friends at school than it is to load a clip into an AR15 and start pray’n’spraying their guts over the walls. Not to mention it’s a lot harder to kill a few dozen people with a knife than it is a gun. I believe this to be true for almost all gun related deaths. Suicide or homicide, both could be somewhat prevented and lessened greatly if a Gun was never in the picture. > Now I understand right wingers ideological outlook on the right to own a 1700’s flint lockrifle. It’s more ideological than anything, at it’s core it’s saying we the people own our government. People are not compelled to do stuff by the government, the government is compelled to do stuff by the people. But in reality we aren’t fighting a physical war against our government, we don’t need to and don’t have the resources to defend against the US government if they wanted to just send soldiers to our houses to cuck our wifes with automatic machine guns pointed at our faces. That’s not going to happen because we’ve advanced past that, the government will do things to oppress us in much more subtle ways that can’t be fought against with a gun. So I find that ideological concept right wingers hold to be stupid. Wanting to give your citizens power is great, but wanting to give them all samurai swords, guns, nukes, etc… is stupid and counteractive to the reason government exists, because people are stupid and require imaginary constructs to promote fear and order in their hearts for them to act like civilized people. Well said, Barack Obama. I’m not sure how you get the gun-genie back in the bottle at this point, but for the vast majority of Americans except those in law enforcement, a gun is not a necessity. It never really was. If a homicidal person had something even bigger and more deadly than an AR-15 handy, I imagine they would use that instead. Armed with a pocket knife, they would only get so far before being apprehended. Plus, many knifing victims live afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/64 "2018-02-16T23:06:37Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > “even one who has had the kind of tactical training available to civilians”? Really? I think there are a bunch of Front Sight defensive handgun graduates who would beat the ass of any of the recent school shooters seven days a week. It’s not like any of them (the recent school shooters) have been “a police officer with SWAT training or a former infantryman who has deployed” either. Oh, look, a Rambo fantasy. Are we still talking about the universe where _everyone_ is armed? In that case your Rambo will be shot by four innocent bystanders. Two of those will have been trying to shoot a third innocent bystander, and six other people will have shot at Rambo and missed, two of which will have hit yet other innocent bystanders. Note that all the bystanders except Rambo are freaking out during this whole process. That said, the attacker will probably go down eventually. He may even kill a good half of the people who die in the incident! ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/65 "2018-02-16T23:12:46Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > … Are we still talking about the universe where _everyone_ is armed? … I’m not. I thought that particular piece of the OP (“all”) was dumb. No one is proposing we arm _everyone_, at least AFAIK. I just think it’s also dumb to suggest that no one but a SWAT officer or infantrymen has a chance against the average school shooter. The average school shooter is not particularly bright, or skilled with a weapon. They certainly don’t, on average, have any sort of tactical training. What did this last one do after he finished shooting up the school? Did he move on to his devious and crafty E&E plan? No. He went to Subway and bought a fucking soda. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/66 "2018-02-16T23:25:48Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I’m not. I thought that particular piece of the OP (“all”) was dumb. No one is proposing we arm _everyone_, at least AFAIK. I just think it’s also dumb to suggest that no one but a SWAT officer or infantrymen has a chance against the average school shooter. The average school shooter is not particularly bright, or skilled with a weapon. They certainly don’t, on average, have any sort of tactical training. > > What did this last one do after he finished shooting up the school? Did he move on to his devious and crafty E&E plan? No. He went to Subway and bought a fucking soda. I get the impression that school shooters generally do alright for themselves in the “shooting people” department - tactical training or not. Regarding the Rambo fantasy, I will freely concede that there are probably military grade civilian training programs that grant you nerves of steel, a steady hand, and an immunity to bullets that a police officer would envy. However I don’t believe that a statistically significant percentage of the population has attended such a program. The average yahoo with a gun will be a little too busy shitting his pants to detect the threat, whip out his pistol, and coolly line up a shot between the eyes before the (initial) shooter can rack up a body count. All that said, if there are enough guns in enough people’s hands _somebody_ is going to shoot the shooter sooner or later. And then probably start shooting each other, because it’s not like these civilian commandos are wearing uniforms to identify themselves to each other as good guys or anything. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/67 "2018-02-16T23:31:30Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I get the impression that school shooters generally do alright for themselves in the “shooting people” department - tactical training or not. > > Regarding the Rambo fantasy, I will freely concede that there are probably military grade civilian training programs that grant you nerves of steel, a steady hand, and an immunity to bullets that a police officer would envy. However I don’t believe that a statistically significant percentage of the population has attended such a program. The average yahoo with a gun will be a little too busy shitting his pants to detect the threat, whip out his pistol, and coolly line up a shot between the eyes before the (initial) shooter can rack up a body count. … Here’s the mistake you’re making: No statistically significant percentage of the school shooters have attended military grade training programs, have nerves of steel, a steady hand, and an immunity to bullets that a police officer would envy, and yet they “do alright for themselves in the shooting people department”. They are just, to use your words “the average yahoo with a gun” too. Well, assuming that the teachers are also just average, it’s not a “Rambo fantasy” to say that when two untrained individuals end up in a gunfight, the bad guy is not going to win all of them. The teacher would win some. That’s my point. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/68 "2018-02-16T23:35:53Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Here’s the mistake you’re making: No statistically significant percentage of the school shooters have attended military grade training programs, have nerves of steel, a steady hand, and an immunity to bullets that a police officer would envy, and yet they “do alright for themselves in the shooting people department”. They are just, to use your words “the average yahoo with a gun” too. Well, assuming that the teachers are also just average, it’s not a “Rambo fantasy” to say that when two untrained individuals end up in a gunfight, the bad guy is not going to win all of them. > > The teacher would win some. That’s my point. The shooter has a clear advantage, because they not only have the element of surprise and have had hours to prepare themselves for this moment, they _also_ came to school that day expecting a gunfight. I realize that you might start every day prepared to kill somebody, but I don’t think that’s the norm. And if it’s known that all the teachers are packing, then the shooter knows who to target first. You can be reasonably certain that the first teacher confronted won’t know what hit him. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/69 "2018-02-16T23:41:38Z")
> [@Settimo](#): > > An excellent question. A followup–why isn’t there a mass shooting in Switzerland every 2 months? (hint: it rhymes with mulcher) Vultures? 😛 I really hate how people say ‘culture’ is the difference and then completely fail to actually address the real cultural differences. If the USA has a different social contract than _die Schweiz_, and we get different and worse results than they do from the same proportion of firearms in the populace as they have, then giving us the same proportion of firearms is not such a great idea. I think most Yanks who want guns for themselves and use the ‘culture’ excuse are trying to convince us that they, somehow, in isolation, are trustworthy gun owners, and that their strong religious upbringing or something is a reasonable substitute for actually being indoctrinated and regulated as part of a militia. Well, it’s not. To outsiders, the Vegas shooter looked exactly like the folks we’re expected to trust, until he started spraying the crowd. (ETA: Sadly, some people seem to think that being white and speaking the right dialect and going to the right church are enough cultural markers for society to allow some individual his own personal gun. If that’s what you mean by ‘culture,’ you are exactly wrong.) ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/70 "2018-02-16T23:56:29Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > The shooter has a clear advantage, because they not only have the element of surprise and have had hours to prepare themselves for this moment, they _also_ came to school that day expecting a gunfight. Not to mention they often don’t give a shit whether they _survive_. The guy on a suicide mission usually has the advantage. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/71 "2018-02-17T00:14:42Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > Not to mention they often don’t give a shit whether they _survive_. The guy on a suicide mission usually has the advantage. This last one doesn’t appear to have been on a suicide mission. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/72 "2018-02-17T01:18:08Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Are we still talking about the universe where _everyone_ is armed? In that case your Rambo will be shot by four innocent bystanders. Two of those will have been trying to shoot a third innocent bystander, and six other people will have shot at Rambo and missed, two of which will have hit yet other innocent bystanders. Note that all the bystanders except Rambo are freaking out during this whole process. > > That said, the attacker will probably go down eventually. He may even kill a good half of the people who die in the incident! And that isn’t even the real problem. If _everyone_ is trying to be a hardened killer, carrying a gun and ready to protect themselves when it’s time…who are they going to see as the biggest threat? Oh, that’s right, _everyone else_. If everyone has a gun, anyone you see might be able to draw on you and blow you away. Maybe you should pull your gun first. It’s bad enough when every police officer carries a gun and a license to kill. Oddly, when you give lots of people a gun and a license to kill, they _use_ it. In practice, such liberal “carry anywhere and stand your ground” laws start to amount to the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/73 "2018-02-17T01:38:06Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > … Oddly, when you give lots of people a gun and a license to kill, they _use_ it. In practice, such liberal “carry anywhere and stand your ground” laws start to amount to the same thing. Could we examine this belief of yours for a moment? Just two questions to start things off: 1. Looking back at the past several decades, would you say that our “carry anywhere and stand your ground” laws / “license[s] to kill” have become more prevalent or less? 2. What has happened to gun violence during that same time period? Has it gone up? Or down? ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/74 "2018-02-17T01:49:42Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Could we examine this belief of yours for a moment? Just two questions to start things off: > > 1. Looking back at the past several decades, would you say that our “carry anywhere and stand your ground” laws / “license[s] to kill” have become more prevalent or less? > > 2. What has happened to gun violence during that same time period? Has it gone up? Or down? Well, police have an actual license to kill\* as recent news has shown. As for gun crimes, you would need to be willing to consider them _relative_ to overall crimes. No fair saying “gun crimes are less” if they are a greater percentage of crimes relative to the total crime rate. The total crime rates has been dropping. \*only in the most ridiculously extreme cases do they get convicted. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/75 "2018-02-17T01:51:44Z")
Is it possible that the other part of “culture” that we’re ignoring is the part that creates the homicidal killers in the first place? What was his school experience? Why did he feel the only way to draw attention to what he likely felt was his mistreatment at that school previously was to go on a killing spree? I’m concerned about the kind of conditions students live with that would make one of them see a mass killing as the only solution. It wasn’t a murder-suicide; he planned to get away by blending in. It worked too, at least for a while. I don’t suppose the attraction of first-person shooter games for teenagers has any bearing… Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/76 "2018-02-17T01:54:30Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I wasn’t the one who couched the OP in broad brush terms. Yes, afaik Swiss gun ownership is tied to a lot of things, one of which is the defense of the country. So…would arming all their citizens be a stupid idea for the Swiss? Would that be a yes or no from you? > > No, I don’t see the difficulty wrt the question the OP is asking. I think a lot of you are so hung up on the US that you aren’t actually thinking this through. Simple question…is ‘arming all your citizens’ a ‘stupid idea’, flat out and all the time? Or does what you (and the OP) REALLY mean is it stupid that Americans are allowed guns? I’m sorry. I, at least, have let my responses fall back into the same old general gun control argument. No, it probably isn’t stupid to arm all a country’s citizens, if you actually train them to work as a militia, in a communitarian way. Yes, it is very stupid, in an individualistic culture like the USA, to arm a bunch of unorganized individuals with no oversight or cooperation, and just let them go out and play at being the Punisher or Al Capone. If you want to interpret that as “Yanks are too dumb to have guns,” okay, but I think the problem is that we’re not also training and indoctrinating the populace to work as a community. We do not have a well-regulated militia. Switzerland definitely does. That is the difference. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/77 "2018-02-17T02:04:05Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Well, police have an actual license to kill\* as recent news has shown. As for gun crimes, you would need to be willing to consider them _relative_ to overall crimes. No fair saying “gun crimes are less” if they are a greater percentage of crimes relative to the total crime rate. The total crime rates has been dropping. > \*only in the most ridiculously extreme cases do they get convicted. @ **SamuelA** We’ve been handing out CCW licenses in an ever-increasing frenzy over the last 30 years. States all across the country have been liberalizing their concealed-carry laws. Citizens have been practically hoarding guns and ammunition. If there’s one thing both the left and the right agree about, it’s that Americans have gun fever, and bad. You said “Oddly, when you give lots of people a gun and a license to kill, they use it.” If that were true, one might expect that, among all these people who have acquired guns and CCW licenses, gun violence might go up. But instead we’ve found the opposite. Gun violence has gone down, and dramatically. Does that information cause you to reconsider your claim (“when you give lots of people a gun and a license to kill, they use it”)? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/78 "2018-02-17T02:14:48Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > The teacher would win some. That’s my point. If over 3 million teachers carry guns, how many additional murders and suicides will take place by virtue of having so many additional guns in schools? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/79 "2018-02-17T02:28:44Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You said “Oddly, when you give lots of people a gun and a license to kill, they use it.” > > If that were true, one might expect that, among all these people who have acquired guns and CCW licenses, gun violence might go up. But instead we’ve found the opposite. Gun violence has gone down, and dramatically. Does that information cause you to reconsider your claim (“when you give lots of people a gun and a license to kill, they use it”)? I love the way conservatives use any convenient circumstance to posit ridiculous cause-and-effect theories. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to support their agenda. Do more guns result in more gun violence? Academic studies prove the obvious, that [of course they do](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts). But what gun nuts like to talk about is places like Vermont – lots of guns per capita, and not a lot of gun violence, and never mind that it’s a sleepy rural state with more wolves than people. Or Switzerland, never mind that guns there are so tightly regulated that it would give the average NRA nutter conniption fits. Same with gun violence trends. It has gone down, not because of CCW licenses being issued, but for a variety of reasons including the powerful driver of changing demographics that has _reduced crime rates across the board in all western democracies_ – all those countries (and all the non-western ones) that don’t have a lot of guns and don’t have a lot of gun problems and never did. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905/80 "2018-02-17T02:44:01Z")
Is it unreasonable for me to just ask my fellow Canadians to just fuckng give up on this argument with Americans? It’s over. There will be no meaningful change in gun control in America in your lifetime. It’s over. All we can do is stop it at the border as best we can. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arming-all-your-citizens-is-a-stupid-idea/808905.md?page=5)