>>8774999Unlike guns, body armor is far far far far more likely to be used in criminal endeavors.
Seriously show me any civilian who would wear body armor on a daily basis under their clothes for more than like 5 days before realizing how ridiculously bulky it is and how hot it would make their body. It's not like people are clamoring to be able to wear it for self-protection, it's a stupid idea to think anyone is going to need it outside of military applications.
On the other hand, criminals benefit greatly from the availability of body armor, because they only need to employ it during armed robbery. Criminals have the advantage of offensive preparation, so any criminal who wants to get away, say, a bank robbery or outright mass murder, is definitely going to be donning protective armor and it makes it that much harder to stop the crime in progress when you can't easily kill with center mass shots.
I reiterate, the only law abiding civilians who really want body armor are the crazy paranoid right wingers who think "da gubment gon get us!!!" and they, for whatever reason, think they'll actually be fighting against professional militaries. These kinds of people will be the first ones to run and hide if anything like this ever happened, anyway.