> Your regulation can not extend to the whole planet
I'd generally agree, but I happen to be from the USA - and my government spends an outlandish amount of money on military and diplomacy and geopolitical manuvering - which while perhaps not having the rigorous structure and definition of "regulation" - serves much the same purpouse.
Casting all this effort aside as mere fictions falls flat.
> should we be trying to kick people out of the nuclear club?
I'll ask a better question: are "we" trying to kick people out of the nuclear club?
Yes. In fact, "we" succeeded in doing so with Ukraine. "We" are certainly trying to keep countries like Iran and North Korea out of the nuclear club - with diplomacy, bribes in the form of economic aid, sanctions, bombs, assassinations, the works.
"We" don't have total control, but regulations don't exert total control either. They are fictions of law that influence results but do not have the binding rigidity of a mathematical proof. They are flawed and imperfect, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly help and has no impact on the real world.
Just as it's unrealistic to perfectly enforce all regulation, it's unrealistic to completely disarm the world, even if we sorely wanted to. So we focus on forcibly disarming those whom we believe to be the worst actors and the most unstable regions of the world, under the pretense of harm reduction (not harm elimination), and negotiate with others in mututal disarmament and observation treaties to ease tensions and reduce (but not eliminate) the chance of accidents. Imperfect, but realistic.
> I just don’t think the risk is as much as you seem to think it is.
I think you've got me pegged as more cautious than I am when it comes to the possibility of industrial or nuclear accidents or terrorism. I might've been asking for that by mirroring your "terrifying" wording. Either that or you're rather on the extreme end of the political spectrum yourself, in favor of deregulation, as I believe I'm less cautious than the average voter on that front, and believe my government to generally be overreacting on behalf of the voters. (Which isn't to say you're wrong, merely that I'm unconvinced.)
I think you're also more worried than I am about the risk of government intervention infringing upon civil liberties. Which isn't to say I'm unworried - in fact, it's the very thing I worry about the most when it comes to the aforementioned government overreaction. But I'm not quite to the point of "no regulation is good regulation", which you're somewhat coming across as.
EDIT: Aww heck, let me explicitly answer this too:
> How is johnny down the road with a nuclear weapon any different than some other person unknown to you in military of the next country over with a nuclear weapon?
Simple: I kinda half maybe partially trust my government, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust the next country over, to kinda half maybe partially vet and trust their military personel before giving them access to nuclear weapons.
It's not perfect, but it's kinda half maybe partially better than nothing.
If we gave Johnny down the road nukes without vetting him at all, I bet that'd make a lot of countries nervous. Nervous enough to try and pressure us socially and economically into doing so. Maybe even enough to try and interfere with our elections, or use their own bribes, or assassins, or ...