I'm copying and pasting from another thread I posted in just a few hours ago on basically the same thing.

If you're wanting a good faith explanation:

The folks who own guns are almost all conservative and live in red states where there is positive sentiment towards ice. The people who are protesting are all left wing and very likely don't own a gun, and bringing a gun to a protest is easily how you make what could be a day of bruises and cuts into a day of bloodshed. I've been to several protests, and the big message is "don't give them any reason to mow down the crowd".

Let's also consider why we don't organize like they do in Paris. You get arrested? Fired from your job. You get fired from your job? There goes your healthcare. There goes your housing. Our resistance is slow, not because we aren't passionate or are too complacent and dumb, it's because the sad fact that sick, starving, and homeless people make for poor resistance, and I doubt anyone wants that fate.

The system we have is against us in ways far more sophisticated than what you deal with in other countries. We are surveilled by are government, controlled by our cops, and sold by our corporations. But we aren't dumb. We aren't weak. We see the hellfire and somehow still go out to do what we can, it's just we are up against the most powerful domestic military force in the world.

Anyway, I gotta go teach children who didn't ask for any of this. I don't know how to keep it together, but somehow they do. If you're in Chicago, I'll see you in the streets next protest.✊

PS: the kids are alright

Talked to a US coworker today, they are to apathetic to gun violence or any violence that it hasn't registered that the country is sliding into full facism