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No, normal people are not individually targeted by terrorist groups, especially not groups that send several bombs to her and other SF supervisors and are affiliated with organizations which assassinate school superintendents in nearby cities
I'm pretty close to a gun rights absolutist, but it's worth mentioning that being armed isn't actually a very good defense against assassination. As you point out in the first link, bombing is a common means of assassination; shooting bombs sounds cool, but probably won't do much to prevent a car-bomb from taking out a target. In the event that an assassin does engage with a firearm, a competent one is likely to choose the Oswald approach of firing an accurate, high-powered rifle. Carrying a pistol isn't going to do much against someone with a 6.5 Creedmoor sighted in at 200 yards, and the accuracy at that distance is pinpoint.
To the extent that firearms are useful as a self-defense tool, I would guess that they have at least as much utility for a convenient store worker as a politician.
But the issue is less the utility of the tool than the specificity of the threat. Moreover, Marcus Foster was killed with a handgun, not by a bomb or high-powered rifle.
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I'd go so far as to say that a personal firearm is significantly less useful to protect yourself from assassins and terrorists, as your personal firearm has zero intimidation value against an ideological and/or crazy assassin. The vast majority of defensive gun uses do not feature the gun actually being fired; in most the criminal gives up after the gun is brandished and he realizes the citizen is armed. The average political assassin is figuring on dying in the process to begin with, the average carjacker is not.
That said, in casual conversation, I've said that if I were a presidential family member with Secret Service protection, I would insist on having a personal sidearm. Whatever training I have to take, whatever test I have to pass. Not because I'd imagine being particularly useful, but because I wouldn't want to die crouching and hiding uselessly. I'd rather, as a matter of personal pride, die at least pretending to do something useful. So I can see a motivation to carry beyond actual effectiveness against assassins.
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Completely and totally irrelevant to my point. You just further buy into the notion that special people face special threats and deserve special treatment, which I reject in it's totality.
No, I am noting that that particular person at that particular time faced a particular threat from a particular group. If she did not show good cause for a concealed weapon permit, then no one can, so you seem to be advocating that no one should have been issued a concealed weapon permit
Are you purposely trying to bait me?
OP pointed out that virtually no one in San Francisco can get a conceal carry permit, and that it's rank hypocrisy for Feinstein to have gotten one. To further their point, asking bing how many CCP have been issued in San Francisco
And you proceed to completely ignore the point about hypocrisy or special treatment and instead harp on how Feinstein really deserved a CCP. I keep making the point that she's no more deserving, morally, than many of victims and future victims of violent crime in San Francisco.
And you return that I'm advocating that no one should be issued a concealed weapon permit.
Sir, I say in all serious. Are you distracted and not paying full attention to the arguments you are engaging in? Are you getting a blowjob under the table right now? Is this the other window you keep open while you chain smoke and game in a cyber cafe? What is your fucking deal?
No OP made a causal claim -- that she got one because she was "important" -- and I merely pointed that there seems to have been another reason.
No one doubts that it was difficult to get CCP in SF during the decade ending in 2017. But that is not the point, and besides note that Feinstein did not have a permit at that time either.
And I keep making the point that that claim is based on a misstatement of the facts.
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You mean to imply that a random person has the same chance of getting JFKd as JFK, assuming equal security?
I'm saying a random person has just as much moral right to defend themselves from the threats they are likely to face as a "special" person from the "special" threats they are likely to face. A special person might risk assassination, a non-special person risks getting randomly (or pseudo-randomly) being violently and potentially lethally victimized in other ways. You have a moral right to defend yourself from all of them. Targeted assassination isn't the one special category you have a moral right to defend yourself from.
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