Yes, thank you! That was some of the research I was trying to allude to (I couldn’t remember who had done it). There’s all sorts of research that finds that gun ownership frequently gives people a sense of power that causes them to escalate all sorts of situations (including things like doing more aggressive driving and road-rage), thus themselves becoming the problem. And when they cause a conflict and whip out their gun, the conflict is “resolved” because it was of their making to begin with.
The fact is, anyone who talks about guns and self-defense are talking about imaginary scenarios. In reality, opportunities to actually use a gun in self-defense are vanishingly rare. Moreover, being prepared for that improbable event would mean creating all sorts of problems for oneself in the meantime - having the gun used against you, increasing the likelihood of someone in the household committing suicide, or at best menacing innocent people with your gun (because in a real self-defense situation, the gun has to be out and ready before trouble erupts - waiting until after is usually too late). I mean, one thing that people like to cite as a fear is home invasion - but in the vast majority of home invasions, the homeowner opened the door for the invader. So unless one routinely answers the door by greeting visitors with a gun in their face, the gun doesn’t help…
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