"...allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves..."

To make this effective, enough citizens would have to carry guns everywhere (church, shopping centre etc.) and be trained to use them.

Some problems:
1. it's mostly women with kids who go to shopping centres, so if we rule out kids, are we planning to arm and train women - mothers? OAPs?
2. Let's assume that 5 terrorists attack a shopping centre where there are 100 armed civilians, men and woman. That's 105 guns minimum. The terrorists open fire, the 100 armed shoppers return fire. Will the death rate be higher or lower than if the shoppers were unarmed?
3. What happens with all those guns at home, more kids' accidents, more suicides, more murders? What is the cost benefit: how many regular/routine accident / suicide lives are worth sacrificing to (maybe) saving a few lives in rarer/occasional terrorist attack?

The USA gives us a good model for what happens when guns are widespread in the civilian population. However I cannot think of an example there where armed civilians prevented or minimised a terrorist attack.

So what to do. Certainly better security (barriers, trained armed guards) at places known to be targeted. I was interested to see, on a trip to (a stable part of)the Philippines, men with machine guns guarding external ATMs, who greeted you politely 'good morning, ma'am'. when you took some money out. On the other hand, many buildings had a sign at the door: 'Please leave your gun at the door'.

The trouble with deciding to protect 'soft targets' is that they cease to be soft. So the dedicated terrorist moves to other unprotected 'soft targets'.

eg previously planes themslves were soft targets. So enhanced checking was done to make them 'unsoft'. So the terrorists moved to attacking the terminals themsleves. So security was expanded to including checking at the terminal entrances. So the terrorists moved to attacking those outside the terminals. Some US airports now expand checking to cover those trying to get within cooee of the airport precincts. An ever increasing security perimeter.

Why not cut to the chase and just expand the security perimeter to where it always should have been - the national borders.

_____________________________________

"We're all someone's daughter
We're all someone's son"

The trouble is that some of 'us' don't see daughters, they see future sex slaves and/or third wives. Some of 'us' would prefer that didn't eventuate.

Hey Cossomby,
I like arguing the Pro's and Con's.

More Problems:
"1. it's mostly women with kids who go to shopping centres, so if we rule out kids, are we planning to arm and train women - mothers? OAPs?"

What happens when you arm some mums but not others or some OAP's and not others?
More will also want to be armed "Why should she be able to protect her kids and I can't protect mine"; and more who object "Why are those types of people premitted to have firearms?"
It's a can of worms.

"2. Let's assume that 5 terrorists attack a shopping centre where there are 100 armed civilians, men and woman. That's 105 guns minimum. The terrorists open fire, the 100 armed shoppers return fire. Will the death rate be higher or lower than if the shoppers were unarmed?"

Well that's the point isn't it.
Armed terrorists are going to think twice before doing that if they know everyone else is armed.
But lets say they did; Don't you think those future said victims deserved a sporting chance to defend themselves?
That they should not just be fish in a barrel for some other angry nutcracker with a crazed ideology?
That they could have a chance to take out their executioners before they or others get killed?

If not, are we just saying 'society accepts these deaths' as the price we pay for what you outlined as preventing in item '3'.

Regards your summary, your answer has it's 'con's' too because that's essentially a 'police state'.
The left force immigration and civil unrest and the response is the justification to become a total surveillance and police state sold to as as 'being necessary to protect us'.

They created the problem that justified the response; because the response was what they really sought all along.

Dear Is Mise,

Still intent on importing the US gun culture into this country. Are we not American enough for you already?

Yuo quoted Noble as saying;

"there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called “soft targets” are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves"

Well there is of course another choice and we have employed it to great effect in this country, it is called gun control.

You continue to pine for the Wild West, seriously mate it is time to move.

As much as I would really lament the day we all had to carry a F/A in order to protect ourselves, our families and close friends from some deadly ad hoc terrorist incident. It may well happen sooner than we think?

Perhaps as news of such events make their way into our daily media with more regularity, governments may have no other viable option but to take the extreme measures of permitting the carriage of a personal F/A for protection? Thank goodness I'll be dead before that happens!

Imagine if you will, most adult men and women, while leisurely walking about doing their shopping, banking or even just socialising, but just minding their business...? Well concealed beneath their nice suits, dresses or even casual jeans and shorts, those who wish to, are packing a loaded gun? What a hell of a world in which to live, and bring up kids? You're going out front door shopping with your wife, '...got the grocery list; the car keys; oh don't forget the .357 magnum, it's in your shoulder rig, dear...'!

AC: I take note of your comments.

Perhaps I should have added, in my supermarket hypothetical, that the civilians with guns will inevitably be less well trained than terrorists or professionals such as police. As a result, in such a shoot-out, collateral damage from civilians with guns is more likely to be other civilians, not the terrorists themselves. So rethinking my example: 5 armed terrorists, 100 armed but inexperienced civilians, plus 150 unarmed civilians, a large proportion kids. I predict that the armed civilians are far more likely to kill/wound both armed and unarmed civilians than they are to kill/wound the terrorists. Basically it's a question of numbers. In a crowd of 255 people, 105 people with guns (100 of them inexperienced, and so more likely to shoot wildly in panic that carefully target the terrorists, indeed are likely to mistake other civilians with guns for terrorists) will kill more than 5 people with guns.

Deaths from terrorist attacks in western countries are tiny compared with middle eastern and Africa. We already accept significantly much higher death rates in traffic accidents as a price to pay for the benefits of easy, personal road travel (recognising efforts to reduce the toll). Perhaps what is different is the unpredictability of terrorist attacks. Or is it really different? Every day when we get into a car we run the risk of dying unpredictably (some of that risks is due to 'accident', but some is due to deliberate actions by others - drug/alcohol, or suicide by car). Yet we still do it. By comparison the risk of death from a terrorist attack in Australia is miniscule, yet it sends us into a panic.