Also an Australian. I have a feeling this may not make much sense to Americans.

Bulletproof clothing only protects you against bullets (well it protects against knives too but you can buy less expensive slash/stab resistant clothing). In Australia there is virtually no gun violence. The only people who can shoot you are cops. They will only shoot you if you're doing something that justifies being shot at. Therefore, the only reason you'd need bulletproof armor is if you intend to do something that would justify the police shooting at you.

Encryption on the other hand has legitimate purposes. It's quite possible for someone to say steal all your money by intercepting your bank account login and it requires no special, heavily restricted equipment to do so.

There's Bikies/Gangs who do drive-by shootings.

True, but without commenting on the merit/justice of it, they've historically focused on targeting themselves/each other.

Most bulletproofing that you would wear that isn’t actually armor is not stab proof.

Also, it’s trivial to make effective rifle armor out of AR500 steel, Rhino Liner (or other bed liner) as a spall guard and a nylon/Velcro plate carrier which will not tax a third year cosplayer in the least to sew.

It just occurred to me that lots of cosplayers are really good seamstresses.

My youngest is into cosplay, and seeing the amount of work that goes into a costume that may only be used for a half day one time is impressive.

>The only people who can shoot you are cops

And ISIS, as has been shown in France.

Perhaps on a technical/analytical level there is a similarity, but i think it is a false equivocation in this context. Its similar in the sense that a right to bear arms implies civilian access to tanks and nuclear weapons.

In reality, law and society are complex creatures. I'd observe that any knowledgeable person observes encryption is commonly and widely used for a variety of purposes, and has many people who will push back against its denial of use.

In terms of the body armour law, there would presumably be the empirical facts that:

1.) There's just not actually a demand for it amongst the society in the aussie context at least.

2.) The odds of being shot or stabbed by someone other than a close relative is virtually nil in Australia if you're not partaking in a criminal enterprise. And so far as long as those criminal enterprises don't spill over into public related injuries and violence, people's level of fear regarding guns/stabbings is pretty low.

3.) This must be taken in the context of an everyday culture that has a rate of ~1 in 100,000 rate of homicide (non-uniformly distributed admitedly) compared to the united states rate of ~4 or 5. The culture is relatively uniform, and united states-esque laws and policies regarding weapons and obsessions with are generally viewed as a mixture of "crazy", "a warning of what we could become", and just a generally undesirable state of affairs.

There is a debate regarding encryption. Whereas debate around things like increased access to weapons or body armour is "effectively zero" in the context of Australian society (keeping in mind I don't have the time/space to go into the historic details or rural hunter/fisher/farmer politics).

I'm going to assume that canadians in many ways view american laws/society in a similar vein to us in this context: our friendly but crazy relatives. (albeit with them sharing a physical border).

I'm also guessing (I haven't looked it up) that they have a far lower homicide rate, and would suggest, like Australians, that they believe de-escalation and keeping militarized equipment out of the hands of civilians primarily provides a greater civil protection against shootings/stabbings than ownership of body armour would.

Now, to not be objective for a second, i think real life is more complex, but empirically, given the relative differences in homicide rates, i'd say the American case at least appears to be starting the argument on the backfoot :)

Actually, I believe that there is a better case for civilian ownership of tanks, ordinance, and heavy/automatic weaponry than there is for handguns. According to a study by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 86% of gun crimes involved a handgun, even though there are roughly equal numbers of rifles, handguns, and shotguns in the US.

Meanwhile, there's a tanker militia not far from where I live that practices regularly, and doesn't really bother anyone.

I'm fairly certain that there have been no tank related homicides in living memory, and the only two tank related crimes I can find news reports of involve a tank being taken from an army base for a joyride, and Killdozer, which injured no one (discounting the operator committing suicide), and was home-made anyways.

The thing about crime is that criminals instinctively want to hide what they're doing. Handguns are about a million times easier to hide than a rifle, or even a sawn-off shotgun. Having this bulky, visible weapon hanging off of your back is an automatic deterrent to crime.

If we can prevent just one Tank Rampage [1] it would be worth it.

[1] http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/lifestyle/people/sdut-ta...

... I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. That's the first tank incident I referenced, and that wasn't a civilian tank in the first place.

Having all guns be part of a "well regulated militia" could indeed solve many problems in the US.

All our traffic is analysed by unknown third parties but not all of us have reasonable expectation to get shot. I would have this expectation at least in places with decent regulation.