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As someone who lives in Arizona, I think there's also the question of if you can get armed support from the police if you need it in a hurry which drives gun sa

• jfengel 6y ago
  There's a kind of catch-22 here, in that the interpretation of the Second Amendment guarantees that the government really doesn't have a monopoly on force -- in practice if not in theory. There is no place on earth where the police can stop an armed burglar in time. Their gun allows them to apply deadly force instantly and (at short range) almost perfectly. That use of force isn't legitimate, but it makes it difficult for the government to enforce its legitimacy. It's hard to track down the person who committed the crime. If the gun was merely a threat and not an actual homicide, it won't be given the highest priority. Since anybody could have a gun, merely having one is no indicator of criminality. But it does mean that any police encounter has the potential to turn deadly, so they have to treat every member of the public with a distance that easily turns to hostility. Which is to say, in the US, the government doesn't have a monopoly on force. Its monopoly on legitimate force still holds but is more limited.