The easy access to arms doesn't destabilise, if anything it stabilises. It does, however, result in a constant tick-over of domestic murders, suicides, accidents, people shot dead by toddlers, and (in the US) seemingly purposeless mass murder-suicides.

Coronavirus has only just overtaken the US's normal firearms death toll.

> ... that society will devolve into this immediately, every fender bender or bit of road rage turning into life or death conflict.

To provide context, here is some data on that:

"cases of road rage involving a firearm — where someone brandished a gun or fired one at a driver or passenger — more than doubled to 620 in 2016, from 247 in 2014."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/road-rage-guns.html

That doesn't amount to "civilization-breakdown", but whether it's a level that's worth worrying about is something different people will feel differently about. I suspect it is a higher number of cases (per capita) than many other countries with stricter gun laws.

How many of those were would-be fistfights that were de-escalated to nonviolence by brandishing (literally: holding a weapon) by a victim? A lot of casually violent people become a lot more polite when they realize they don’t get to punch or beat whomever they like. That’s a good outcome, to me, but that figure lumps it in with violence where people get shot, mixing good gun-related outcomes with bad ones, as if brandishing is an end in itself to be prevented.

You can’t really stop road ragers from getting out of their car with the intent to hit someone. You can indeed convince them that attacking armed strangers is a bad idea—without anyone being hurt.

Providing context means, well, providing context, not just tossing out a composite figure without background or breakdown. A good actual context for that would be the not-gun-related road rage assault figures before and after, and what percentage of that increase is brandished (no one injured) vs shot/shot at (violence that should be prevented/reduced).

Yeah, gun brandishing incidents is a really weird thing to get worked up about. Gun homicides, sure - but those have been going down in the US since the 90s. (Despite the assault weapons ban expiring. Funny, that)

Homicides aren't normally committed by people who would need an assault rifle, and most are probably not using an assault rifle to kill themselves, either.

Also, I wouldn't exactly feel good if someone cut me off for driving a little too slow for them and they waved a gun at me. Somehow these arguments make that OK as if it isn't an escalation or is "oh well gee at least we didn't fist fight."

I can't comprehend a 1 in a million per year event (brandishing, not even necessarily firing) being anywhere the top of anyone's list of things to worry about.

Any idea what the driver (pun not intended) is on that increase? Were more guns sold? Did people abruptly start driving more?

There is a huge difference, the number is rather low, and should be noted, but none of those outcomes are good.