I think the analogy is a little off, because any particular person with a gun might be expected to be irrational, psychotic, etc. However, MAD is based on the principle that states are rational actors, and that no rational actor would ever risk a sizable portion of their own population, economy, etc, for literally no gain other than like destruction in the adversary's country. No matter how terrible any given leader is (and the USSR had a few that were certainly that), the decision to use nukes would almost certainly be by committee, even if the choice to fire ultimately lay with one person.Does everyone owning and carrying a gun make us all safer on a personal level, any more than every sovereign nation having a nuclear arsenal make global politics safer?
Hmm, that is a good point. I would suppose a group of committee members could be expected to be more rational, judicious or cautious. States don't (or at least I hope they wouldn't) keep their nukes on their hip like some Zimmerman character. I think I would be willing to fire a gun at someone in self-defense, but if I were a political/military leader, would I be able to fire a nuke as a preemptive or retaliatory strike? I suppose MAD works because there is this assumption that nobody would fire that first nuke, where as personal safety in a society that advocates for individual gun ownership breaks down when people will begin shooting a varying degrees of provocation.