[nathanaldensr]

The fact guns are lethal is a feature, not a bug. Gun owners recognize how evil mankind can be. They are often students of history--all the dictators over the course of time who themselves used the power of government enforced by those happy to subjugate others. Much of the youth today have never lived in an actual warzone or seen dictators rise to power and actually subjugate people. These youths want to believe that everyone is inherently good and to be trusted; this perspective is incredibly naive as a cursory examination of history will tell us.

Yes, there are those who would use your physical vulnerability against you to control you, subjugate you, and even kill you. If and when that happens, you will realize your error. Many people are trying to prevent that future from happening in the first place by being armed to fight back.

[handrous]

Students of history? Private arms are sometimes among the tools that help dictators and other authoritarian governments come to power. I'm not aware of them as a major factor in preventing the same, with any kind of regularity (actually, I'd be interested in examples of that—at best, I'm aware of them as a probably-not-necessary secondary factor, way after things like foreign intervention or acquiring the support of a significant fraction of the military, either of which comes with its own risks, of course). I'd be surprised if increasing the rate of private arms ownerships is, per se, an improvement for a state's likelihood to become run by a dictator or other authoritarian government.

Opposing private arms ownerships doesn't necessarily equate to aiding (even accidentally) some hypothetical, future authoritarian state. It's very much not clear to me that the two are strongly connected at all, nor, if they are, that the causality runs the way proponents of the 2nd amendment as a check on authoritarian or otherwise unaccountable government assume it does.