> Certainly countries with [...] fewer guns experience less shootings
Yes, which is the opposite of your claim that an armed population prevents mass shootings.
An armed population enables mass shootings, which is why, in total, per capita, and heck, probably even per gun, the US has the most mass shootings outside of actual organized armed conflicts anywhere in the world.
"No guns = no shootings" is an idealized logical conclusion, not a pragmatic consideration for how an existing super-empowering technology can be used by individuals to decentralize and evenly distribute political power, which firearm rights fundamentally are. We are safer and more reliable when the State does not have a monopoly on force.
> "No guns = no shootings" is an idealized logical conclusion, not a pragmatic consideration
Perhaps, but “better control of guns = less shootings” I'd an emninently well-demonstrated pragmatic consideration.
> an existing super-empowering technology can be used by individuals to decentralize and evenly distribute political power
The US has very nearly the least evenly distribution of political power as well as the easiest access to firearms in the developed West, so whatever the US actually has, ideological fantasies aside, isn't a pragmatic solution to that question, either.
> We are safer and more reliable when the State does not have a monopoly on force.
The State is by definition whatever entity or combination thereof possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Yes, which is the opposite of your claim that an armed population prevents mass shootings.
An armed population enables mass shootings, which is why, in total, per capita, and heck, probably even per gun, the US has the most mass shootings outside of actual organized armed conflicts anywhere in the world.