Reply #123: Isn't democracy great?

[Euromutt]

Question, which countries in the world allow a person with a gun within shooting range, even long shooting range, of their leader?

Only the US.

Of course, it does bear noting that there are plenty of governments that won't trust their citizens with firearms, let alone with a firearm within theoretical shooting distance of government leaders, because those governments have a major legitimacy problem. Bear in mind most western European countries adopted restrictions on private ownership of firearms in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia because the governments of those countries were afraid that large numbers of freshly demobilized soldiers, experienced in the use of firearms and possibly a little miffed about being thrown into the meat grinder by a government that didn't even extend them the right to vote (even in countries with universal male suffrage, the voting age was not reduced from 21 to 18 until the 1970s), might get ideas about exerting influence on the nature of that government, if you catch my drift.

What I'm getting at is that keeping armed citizens a long way away from government leaders may be because the citizens have some legitimate grievances against those government leaders. A government that would trust its citizens to be armed in the presence of its leaders would be a government that had faith in its democratic processes.