[Urbane Guerrilla]

The "arms race" argument is badly enough flawed that it's no longer a serious item of the discussion in the United States.

An arms race requires the resources of a nation behind it to, ah, fuel the racecar. If there is an arms race in civilian armament, the racers are shuffling along on walkers and invalids' slippers.

What really does seem to spread a particular weapon technology around is familiarity with the works. Percussion arms, a certain generation in the 19th -- widespread with military use of this with the rifle musket. Revolvers, another. Next big shift-over was the bolt-action rifle, mainstay of the medium- and big-game hunter for a lot of decades -- and began its career with military use brought very much home in the Great War. Now in the United States, we've had semiauto pistols serving this Republic's Army since 1911, still got semiauto pistols, and now more and more of the rifles have automatic transmissions and ergonomic handles sticking out of them, and this generation of rifle shooters is going to look upon the 5-round bolt-action rifle like it was a blackpowder musket -- and nostalgia-shooters will go out shooting them. The way I go out and shoot my .58 Hawken. Acre of white smoke after the BAM!