I like Colion, but this is a dumb argument.
First, the average cop isn't walking around with weapons of war. Yes, they have access to them, but they only pull them out when they are going into situations that warrant them or that they expect might warrant them. When you get pulled over for a traffic ticket, they aren't carrying a fully automatic AR. They pull that out when they are about to go perform a raid on a drug house occupied by known violent criminals. Cops having to carry high power weaponry to go handle some dude that's harassing everyday citizens is super rare.
I don't need any of the guns I have. I could probably defend myself just fine in 99% with something far less capable. Does that 1% exist? Sure, but few people are running around here tooling up to deal with the 1%. Nobody buys a fire truck because of the off chance they might have a fire at their hands. They get a fire extinguisher and smoke detectors, and rely on the firefighters if that's one day not enough. We can do the same thing with home defense.
At the end of the day, everything Colion said is cap. Gun enthusiasts have those weapons because they want them. They like guns. They like shooting them. They like tooling them up. They like showing them off. Etc... A dude might have a high powered rifle that he can knock people off at 300 yards. He has no expectation to ever use that in a home defense situation, so let's not act like we NEED any of this stuff. We don't. We just want it, and that's ok.
1st clarification: No beat cop has or has access to weapons of war with the lone exception of snipers. If you're talking about AR15's, they've never been used in a single war by any country on earth, full stop. They're not "weapons of war". The exception is going to be SWAT, who likely
DOES have actual "weapons of war" like MP5's, UMP's, P90's, M4/M4A1's, etc. Cops in many agencies DO keep an AR15 in their patrol vehicle in the same way that they used to keep a shottie for those "just in case" moments but those are semi-auto and, thus, are not weapons of war. Also, the majority of gun owners in this country
are not "gun enthusiasts" by any stretch of the imagination and there's extensive, non-partisan polling to prove that.
Now...
When you get robbed, is there a cop on hand to stop it or protect you? No.
If someone breaks into your crib, is there a cop on hand to stop it or deal with the intruders? No.
Police in this day and age are purely reactionary. The only time they can somewhat prevent crime is by their constant presence i.e. frequent neighborhood patrols, which they largely don't do anymore. This means you're gonna get robbed, your house is gonna get broken into, someone might get raped, etc unless you have a firearm or some other means of self defense and if you do have a gun on you, why shouldn't it be the same type and have the same capacity that a cop uses to stop those very same criminals?
The average cop in this country carries a Glock 17 or a 19 with a 17 round mag or 15 in the case of a G19 and the AR's they use have standard 30rd mags. Why limit the citizens from having that for their defense as well?
Also, you're limiting this to "home defense", ignoring that the majority of incidents where someone would use a firearm occur outside of the home. Likewise, most rifles that shoot "high power" calibers are hunting rifles. The .223/5.56 cart that the average AR shoots is a medium power, intermediate round, not a high powered round like the .308, .350 Legend, .30-06, .300 winmag, etc and is unsuitable for anything other than dispatching coyote, wolves, or similar sized animals.
