Maybe you guys just feel differently about this kind of thing but I just don't get how you can expect other people like cops to protect you if you aren't willing to protect yourself.
We do protect ourselves, not least by living in a country that has sensible laws about guns. It is silly saying every individual has to be willing to do as much to protect themselves as the police and army do: does every individual have to have surveillance equipment, machine guns, grenades and tanks?
Well, if you really fear your neighbor that much then why do you not want to arm yourself just in case your fears turn out to be true?
The example give was an unstable neighbour with a gun. Mavis doesn't need to be armed, because her neighbour doesn't have a gun, because gun control.
Why do you seem determined that arguments between neighbors would escalate if they owned guns,
Gun injury and homicide statistics in the US demonstrate that sometimes that is exactly what happens.
A lot of mumsnetters have no actual knowledge of this subject and will form ideas based on incorrect assumptions.
No, their ideas are based on cold, hard facts about those statistics - and it is very noticeable indeed that you keep swerving them.
Your argument about how it would "work" if someone with a gun pulled it in, for example, one of the school shooting situations was based on the assumption that everyone with guns has the training you have. Again, you have wholly failed to deal with the fact that many, many people who own guns haven't had that training.