You gentlemen are denying the creation of a society based on laws where people are expected to interract with each other without using leathal force. Your fear of criminals is making you work toward a society where people can easily kill each other from a distance. Ideally, the law is supposed to be the great equalizer between the strong and the weak. If you don't want to work towards this ideal, bring in experts from Somalia and Liberia to re-engineer the US society.
The purpose of having LEOs is for them to intervene when "it" hits the fan and to capture the criminals. Too many of you are saying that regular people should be given guns and enforce the law themselves. There are reasons why not everyone is allowed to practice/enforce the law. Without a legal process managed by trained individuals, we go back to savagery.
I am happy it's agains the law to carry a gun in Canada unless you are a LEO or a soldier on duty. We have a much lower incidence of violent crimes and gun crimes because of it. I've been in situations where people had violent outbursts and would have drawn a gun had they carried one. The fact that the only ways they could bring a gun is to go through an extensive licencing process or pay through their noses for (legally) dirty guns smuggled in from south of the border and in any case risk several years of incarceration for just having it on their person greatly reduced the ultimate risk of those situations.
One argument that you frequently tout is that there are too many guns already on the market and available to criminals. Criminals have more guns per capita than law abiding citizens. That happened because people like you actively worked toward saturating the market with guns. What is your solution to that? Bring EVEN MORE guns
Owning a gun for protection is making two statements:
1) I am afraid of criminals
2) I don't believe our society is based on laws
You can call me a sheep, a walrus or a raccoon, but you won't convince me that a society where having everyone armed with an ability to kill from a distance will prevent or even reduce crime.