Nathan Paoletta oh boy does it. And I guess that’s the thesis behind my thesis: all the fun-and-games of gamer-friendly space adventure is really pretty nightmarish if you just dig the very tiniest bit.

If your space adventure setting defaults to civilians touring around armed and armored, that implies an ambient threat level that’s just completely off the charts.

But maybe the danger is just between easily policed volumes of space and mostly folks don’t go that far out. So really we’re talking about a narrow and very specific subset of folks who have to arm themselves (shipping container ships in Somali waters, local fixers and translators moving journalists around Helmund Province, cartel drug runners, etc.) and what looks like normalized civilian arms is just the fact that these stories and adventures are narrowly focused on very exceptional people in very exceptional circumstances.

It would be nice to see that division. Like…when that cartel drug runner goes into Miami to party, he might have a small pistol but he’s not gonna draw attention to himself by wearing a flak jacket and grenades at the club. Afghani warlords probably own very nice Mercedes for when they need to do business in Kabul and they don’t want Coalition checkpoints lighting them up on the drive in. And so on.