If I may be permitted to make an observation from across the pond:

What surprises me most about this discussion is how many good, ordinary, peaceable people seem to find it wholly unremarkable that they, and other similar people, should feel the need to carry a gun (concealed or not) for their own protection.

Of course, I can understand the feeling that if the bad guys all have guns then you might want to put yourself on an equal footing. However, here in the UK (where handgun ownership, even for legitimate sporting reasons, is completely banned, and other firearms are very strictly controlled) guns are mostly in the hands of criminals, yet ordinary people don't feel threatened. If my house were to be burgled, it would be very unusual for the burglar to be armed (it would hugely increase his jail sentence, for a start) and I would get into serious trouble for just threatening him with a weapon, let alone using it. Most gun crime here seems to be between criminals, usually drugs gangs.

Even if I were to be mugged by someone with a gun (itself very unlikely), I suspect the mugger would be far less likely to panic and use it since he could be confident that neither I nor a passer-by (even a passing policeman) is likely to haul out a piece and fire back.

An eighteenth century law authorising measures for civil defence may have been entirely appropriate at a time when the US was a young country and its future was still far from certain, and whose expansion relied on the offensive and defensive use of firearms. In a twenty-first century modern society it seems to be to be entirely inappropriate.

I don't know how you could now put the genie back in the bottle, but what really baffles me is that so many reasonable people apparently don't even want to try.