> Giving your populace easy, uncontrolled access to this technology is actually causing rampant shootings.

Notice how one is “just asking” for a hypothetical risk while the other is an everyday fact of life.

The relationship between availability of guns and the amount of gun violence is extremely well-established. I personally am sympathetic to the view that an armed population is a meaningful deterrent against tyranny, but it’s hard to compare a hypothetical to a growing number of deaths. And the odd fact that firearms’ primary political role in our society is to intimidate people while voting doesn’t help either.