Also back on point, I don’t carry and haven’t touched a firearm since Uncle Sam stopped asking me; there’s no interest on my part. I don’t hunt or camp and have no internet in visiting neighborhoods where the risks of carrying outweigh the risks of not carrying.
I question the assumption that not carrying or not having a firearm in the home is taking on additional risk. There are certainly scenarios where guns come in handy, but also scenarios where even a responsible gun owner acting responsibly makes things more dangerous for everyone involved. The risk calculations are different clearing rooms in Fallujah vs. clearing your plate at the Plano Chuck E Cheese.
It’s a bit confusing to me to read gun owners (somewhere on this thread, in the midst of the CR talk) describe scenarios where there turned out to be no threat as some sort of argument in favor of owning. Unless there is actually an intruder, skulking about your house and backyard in your boxers looking for a bad guy gets infinitely more dangerous with a gun vs. a can of wasp spray, an air horn, or just a rapier wit. A gun might make you feel safer, but unless there’s actually a bad guy, it’s way more dangerous. Even if there’s a bad guy, it still might be more dangerous to start a gun fight. The real question — and it depends on the circumstances — is what kind of interactions are more likely to occur.
Comparisons to wearing a seatbelt or other basic safety precautions just don’t make sense to me. Wearing a seatbelt imposes minimal risk on the wearer and no risk to those around them. Guns do the opposite. Sometimes the good guy with the gun saves the day, but other times he escalates a situation or isn’t prepared for the stress of gunfire, or the normally responsible gun owner gets complacent and acts irresponsibly, or there’s untreated mental illness and a dark moment turns into inconsolable grief for a family, or the bad guy intruder turns out to be a family member.
I’ll grant that there are certainly cases where carrying is the wise, logical choice, but those cases are far fewer than most of us think.