I read James Fenimore Cooper, and the pioneers there had weapons... naturally, hostile environment, one needs to shoot first, ask questions later...
now days, we pretend to be a civilized society, the light of free world in the darkness of the tyranny, blah, blah, blah... and yet, when Katrina struck, the looting started... any otherwise peaceful gathering can turn into something violent real fast, i think even the latest camping outside the Wall Street was not immune to that...

in such a violent environment any disruption to normal daily grind may prove fatal - someone losing his otherwise normal mind and going bazookas... even mental health control will not help in identifying a perfect normal dude going biserk - i think, there was a movie (a movie, i know... but we don't read anymore, we watch), about some regular dude going crazy and killing people, i think either Douglas senior, or junior was in that movie... I need to do a search about that one...

my point is, it is very dangerous to have weapons distributed in the society that is not really stable - look at the fiscal cliff, and the debt ceiling, and the whole other plethora of things that are wrong here... V.Lenin said once that he can build a government that even a last maid can operate (кухарка)... sometimes it feels that he had succeeded here, in the States...