Is there a way to condense this code?

I'm creating a multiplayer game that allows multiple characters to be controlled by the same keyboard (Super Smash Brothers, essentially). As a result, I have the same set of variables for each character, and my code looks like this:

player1 = {
	idle = true;
	jumping = false;
	-- Et cetera
}

player2 = {
	idle = true;
	jumping = false;
	-- You get the idea, hopefully.
}

How might I be able to create the same effect without taking up a ton of script space? I would assume that for loops are the way to go, but is there any other way of doing it?

You can do this using a very basic for loop, i.e.

local table1 = {a = 2, b =1};
local table2 = {};

for key, val in next, table1 do -- For every key in table 1
	table2[key] = val; -- Copy the key-value pair over to table 2
end