I have a .50 rifle. If more people have guns then there would be less violent crime. No one's going to go in and hold a store up at gun point if they know someone else in there is going to have a gun ready, potentially everyone else. The same applies in any circumstance, and the problem is, we can try to take the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens because they will abide by gun control laws, but criminals will not have any less weapons, because they can break the law to get them. Gun control in the UK is very strict and now they have a rather large problem with violent crime, especially involving knives.
So there are two reasons the citizens need guns. One, defense from criminals who will always have weapons. Two, defense from tyranny in government. This was the design of the founding fathers, it is the primary reason we have guns. To number
>>8, yes a 12 gauge wouldn't help, because a 12 gauge isn't designed for that purpose. Get a .50 rifle and put an armor piercing incendiary round in there and you could easily put a good hole in a tank, and I have all of this as well as a number of weapons of questionable legality that would make rebellion against tyrannical government rather easy should they be in the hands of the general populace. A government does not act in the benevolent interests of its citizens unless a government is afraid of its citizens. As well these guns of questionable legality are not difficult to get simply because of the law. One simply has to know where to get them, and a criminal easily would. I could take out a SWAT team if I was as good a marksman. You also forget to take into account, if the government got that bad, you'd probably have a lot of the military on your side.