“[I]f society acknowledges that handguns have significant defensive value and can help save the lives of police officers and security guards, how can society deny that handguns can also help save the lives of other people?”

I suspect the same can be said of nuclear weapons, tanks, mortars and moats -- but we don't think everybody should have access to these things. Or do we?

LAC, there's a great difference between a hand gun and a nuclear weapon. Your "logic" makes no sense but liberals rarely do.

...I want a moat...

hey steve, you know if you get a moat you will have to put gators in it .then the liberals would yell cruel and unusual punnishment.

It isn't society that is denying that hand guns help save lives, it is those that wish to control all of us that do. All of us are human including government employees -- none are any less prone to the temptation to take from another. That is why the centralization of power is so dangerous. Better that we all are armed and trained in the various arts of self defense. We are predatory animals, the highest in the food chain, and we cannot deny that there are those that prey upon others for their wealth and power. That is the world, always has been.

Good idea Steve! And just for fun, let's add boiling oil and flaming arrows LOL

Government studies, even under theocratic anti-gun oversight, consistently show guns are used far more in defensive postures (saving lives and protecting against injury) than in criminal / accidental death or injury. Man as a specie, has an innate sense of violence that can be utilized to inhance good and bad — certain tools exaggerate the result.