Gun owners not likely to use firearms for self-defense, study claims

[Eleanors38]

94. Exacerbation is possible, but arming for self-defense is not a systemic social movement....

It is above all immediate self-defense for those attacked. That such self-defense might result in attacks backing off is also possible. I certainly don't want the country to become a social laboratory, but if exacerbation is the result, and attacks continue, then those terrorists will be increasingly above ground and exposed.

There is possibly another dynamic at work. If the kind of attacks we've seen happen again, the terrorists might be emboldened by the lack of resistence. A return to the days of Bombingham would be a reprehensible development. The Deacons for Defense, which operated in Louisiana in the early 60s, is often credited with backing off violent racist attacks (which included Klan-riddled LEOs). Unheard of at the time, and rarely since, one marauding group of racists received return fire fom the Deacons, resulting in the "unofficial death" of one attacker (it seems no one wanted it to get out that a black man killed a white man).