To outgun a military is probably not a practical ambition for a civilian, simply because stockpiling this stuff would be nuts economically. Very ironically this is something where having a black market helps. The live-round 2014 Kiev battles might be an example of a realistic scenario where different gun regulations could have had a strong impact.
There are some definite no-nos, like assault-weapons. And if you want to regulate, instead of prohibit, you have to invest into a good gun culture, which we really don't know anything about. That would be a big social engineering challenge.
There are some advantages, like lone-shooter type events becoming much less insidious, which don't cost as many lives as say sedentary life-styles, but being powerless in those (improbable) situations makes us very insecure. That insecurity is very erosive and tiring; but on the other hand, if gun-carry was implemented, and we didn't have a good enough culture, you'd get "casual" shootings, where what would have been a fist fight turned into a gun fight.
There's also the argument about whether or not to treat adults as inherently competent. Prohibition, i.e. complete deregulation, all in all seems to me like a quick hack; of course, the other side of the coin is that good regulation is really hard. I'm somewhat torn, but leaning towards regulation. To me it seems like one of those decisions that isn't easy, because it's not win-win-win across the board, but it's worse if you don't do it.
Of course this is mostly fantasy. I don't think we'll see gun-carry in the West any time soon. We're used to complete delegation of personal-security and the shift, at this point, would be counter-cultural.
Got it. Though it was pretty common in big parts of The West (as in The Occident) in the first half of the 20th century as well. At least via my understanding of things.
I can't cite a reference, but many pieces of fiction from the day and historical accounts seem to involve people with ready access to firearms. Google produced this which seems to support what I said above (aka British people seemed to have common access to firearms until ~ WW2 times):
There are some definite no-nos, like assault-weapons. And if you want to regulate, instead of prohibit, you have to invest into a good gun culture, which we really don't know anything about. That would be a big social engineering challenge.
There are some advantages, like lone-shooter type events becoming much less insidious, which don't cost as many lives as say sedentary life-styles, but being powerless in those (improbable) situations makes us very insecure. That insecurity is very erosive and tiring; but on the other hand, if gun-carry was implemented, and we didn't have a good enough culture, you'd get "casual" shootings, where what would have been a fist fight turned into a gun fight.
There's also the argument about whether or not to treat adults as inherently competent. Prohibition, i.e. complete deregulation, all in all seems to me like a quick hack; of course, the other side of the coin is that good regulation is really hard. I'm somewhat torn, but leaning towards regulation. To me it seems like one of those decisions that isn't easy, because it's not win-win-win across the board, but it's worse if you don't do it.
Of course this is mostly fantasy. I don't think we'll see gun-carry in the West any time soon. We're used to complete delegation of personal-security and the shift, at this point, would be counter-cultural.