> Or carry concealed permits.

Um, no. The crazy people won't care, the gangbangers will be better armed and generally in a group, and the single mugger will now take your wallet AND gun AND may shoot you if he gets the drop on you instead of just taking your wallet.

> in a small town

It shows. Your assessment of the probability of crime and how you will interact with it is completely wrong.

Actually for the small town I'm in, muggings occur at night between 12 AM and 3AM. My office is down an unlit blind alley. As a result I carry a flashlight and a gun. Should be fairly good at defense. Also train to draw quickly for both. Light stuns; shot stops.

For the gangbangers, they don't really like to involve civilians in a gun fight. They save that for only the most extreme circumstances in territory protection/expansion. Honestly, not too afraid of them. A woman would benefit from a revolver in that situation. That's what my wife carries: Ruger LCR. No hammer so easy to pull from a purse (which is carried crossed over her). If she can't pull from the purse, she'll fire within it (taking the flash burn over rape, for example). In this instance the revolver will operate without catching the purse like a semi-auto would. At that point, they'd most likely run given the noise and possible loss of their friend.

As for the crazies, the point isn't to prevent them from being crazy by themselves. That's their right. It's to defend yourself if they turn that on you. When we go hiking, I carry a gun knowing the gators don't care. Doesn't mean it's useless.

'bsder you seem pretty confident here, despite the fact that everything you've said contradicts what I've heard from LEOs and other trained firearms users.

> despite the fact that everything you've said contradicts what I've heard from LEOs and other trained firearms users.

Really?

1) Muggers

The LEO's I deal with are normally "Just give them your wallet and phone. Do not fight back."

Now, admittedly, most of this advice is from the US and being near big cities. In the US, we don't tend to have kidnappings--normally muggers will take your wallet and phone and run unless you are stupidly in some dangerous area.

2) Gangbangers

Generally will leave you alone unless it is a target of opportunity. However, teenagers are stupid and can consider truly bizarre things "disrespect". Combine this with drugs and you can get some exceptions.

3) Crazy/homeless

Generally the stuff they do never rises to the level of "I can shoot him" until it's too late for you to react.

And, this is, in fact, the crux of the situation. By the time the situation escalates to the level of "I am legally allowed to shoot this person" the situation is often too far gone for the gun to be helpful.

Now, I'm not a tiny female, so I don't present a "target of opportunity". However, women are more often the victim of the gun in the house from their partner than from random strangers.

Finally, my only interactions with concealed carry in my family are accidents where someone almost got shot unintentionally. Nobody in my extended family has ever had to use a gun to defend themselves, but there have been a handful of mishaps (thankfully, nobody harmed).

The statistics are against concealed carry except in fairly exceptional circumstances (jewelers, for example).

Certainly, a wallet (or a jewel!) isn't worth anyone's death, even a criminal's. One doesn't carry in order to defend a wallet. Any decent person would gladly lose $100 and some credit cards, not to have a death on her conscience. A criminal should know, however, that by violating the norms of polite society, he places himself in a fraught situation. It's very easy to cross the line between credibly threatening property and credibly threatening safety.

One carries in order to defend lives. One's own life, the lives of family, and if the situation warrants the lives of other innocent people. It's true that defending life with deadly force will get one in trouble in some jurisdictions. That's why it's better to live in the vast majority of jurisdictions where justified uses of deadly force prompt handshakes rather than criminal charges.

Deadly force absolutely must get one in trouble, in order to determine whether the force was appropriate or not. That much we owe to the deceased and their family.

The best jurisdiction is one where it's hardly considered necessary to carry arms, or use deadly force. Gun ownership and the murder rate (and gun murder rate) seem roughly correlated here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_the_United_States_by...

This is "guilty until proven innocent". That isn't how law is supposed to work. We are supposed to assume that the force was appropriate. Of course, this doesn't mean we don't bother investigating, but the proper assumption is that a person is innocent.

In states that endorse "innocent until proven guilty", the police won't even lock you up or take your gun if you can make a plausible claim to have properly used force.

When the force is appropriate, we owe nothing to the deceased and their family. The deceased was a hazard, and the family set that hazard loose upon society. They owe us:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_fee

I see that your article does not distinguish legal gun ownership from illegal gun ownership. I suspect that "murder" might not be the obvious. (suicide? shot by cop? vehicular homocide?) Medical care varies greatly by state, changing survival odds. You may also be making a backwards assumption about cause and effect: people in places with lots of murder might feel a greater need to have a gun.

The LEOs you've dealt with are clearly not Florida sheriffs from non-urban counties. Brevard County sheriff Wayne Ivey is well-loved for his stance on the matter: good people should be prepared to shoot bad people. His department offers a tactical shooting course. BTW, this is a "Stand Your Ground" state, so there is no duty to retreat or otherwise let an evildoer control you.

I try to imagine a San Francisco or Berkeley police chief telling people to shoot bad people dead. It's... not working. :-)

His assessment is exactly why teenagers in Britain are told not to carry knives -- they're worse than nothing when a bad situation arises.

But I have no idea if that could carry over to guns -- for one thing, they're more difficult to run away from.

[1] http://safe.met.police.uk/knife_crime_and_gun_crime/pressure...

One wouldn't expect press-ganged children ("If you find yourself involved in a gang...") and independent law-abiding adults to face identical situations.

However, it is true that many situations don't call for firearms, and knowing when and how to de-escalate are really the first things an armed citizen should know. Discretion is the better part of valor, keep it in your pants, etc.