What's the answer to this dilemma? I don't know, but I do know that when law abiding citizens are threatened by madmen, the answer to the problem is not for their elected government to disarm law abiding citizens.
Ban Handguns? You’d think these people never heard of a “sawed off” shotgun!
This is an old argument about guns. How do you keep them out of the hands of madmen? The answer that I arrived at years ago is that is the price of freedom. To keep the Government’s snout out of it occasionally the system will fail and someone irresponsible will get their hands on a weapon. Then it is up to the citizenry to rectify the problem.
As armed person is a citizen. An unarmed person is a serf. It is as simple as that.