You don’t have to win for the guns to make a difference. It’s a red herring. The fact is it helps. Even if it only scares the people on the front lines facing those guns, and the leaders don’t care, it still increases the cost of sending people toward that line.

Like, any government agent that hesitates before going into a room to arrest someone has been slowed down by the guns that could be in that room. The person who wrote the order has to consider the guns. The cop who thinks it might be fun to rape some random housewife for the hell of it has to think of those guns.

I don’t understand the resistance to acknowledging that getting shot is something people work hard to avoid, and that avoidance includes not threatening or violating a person who has the power to shoot you.

It’s very simple. It’s why every animal demos its weapons when cornered: the evolutionary data is in and visibly bearing weapons improves survival. That’s why organisms expend energy growing weapons and then expend more energy waving them around when they’re threatened. It works.