With that said, the reality is that clean water, sanitation, and heating are pretty darn boring. It's like prepping 101 to have some available water, a shovel, and a barbecue or a fireplace or a basement to keep warm. If preppers do seem to you (apart from media misrepresentation) to focus more on guns, it's likely because they're long past having basics like food and water taken care of, and guns are more varied than any of the other basic needs.
Every place is different, and maybe guns are less important in your country, but they're very important during collapses in America, whether we want the world to be that way or not. Look back on the social breakdowns in America over the past--the LA riots come to mind--and look at how locals used guns to defend their stores and homes from looting. And those looters were just rioting; they weren't hungry or fighting for survival.
You're right the basics are boring, but it's the basics you'll spend 24/7 trying to obtain long after your weapons and ammo have gone rusty. And if you think you'll be making your own ammo, I'd say no-one at all will have the luxury of that kind of engineering time when they're trying to get the ground to grow enough food to eat.
I’ll give you a hint, there’s a reason the Taliban was walking around with Soviet era AK-47s, and Isis was walking around with US-made M-16s.
"Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces."
Guns really are also not "get and forget" kind of think. They can help or get you killed.
They might get you killed by mismanaging them (basically you shoot yourself by accident), by making you overconfident and not escaping in time, by making you a target "to get your guns", by making you suspicious (imagine checkpoints in now occupied parts of Ukraine) and getting killed in interrogation.
Guns are not all advantages in real world situation.
I wish I could explain how ridiculous it is to remove an option from yourself before a situation arises... but if you don’t already understand that, how could I explain it?
I also think having a fire extinguisher and jumper cables / jump box is a disadvantage in your bizarro scenario where “you might shoot yourself” comes up.
It’s a little funny low obviously little experience you have with firearms - but absolutely trust agents of your government who have maybe 2-3 weeks training once during accedemy with them. Those agents are the ones not coming to help though.
Guns aren't very common in my country so I'm not worried about gun-toting locals rampaging around. Sure, a few might raid a military base or a farmer's shotgun cabinet, but statistically I think my family would be under far more threat from hypothermia, cholera or an infected scratch.