Your fear has not come to pass. From 1980 to 2016, the last year the CDC has statistics for accidental gun deaths, they went from 800 to 500. At the same time the population increased by roughly 50%, and the rate of gun ownership increased dramatically as, for example, shall issue or better concealed carry swept the nation and made gun ownership a lot more useful for most of the people in most of the states.

Firearms collectors don't generally collect the types of guns used in a majority of crimes, which are cheap handguns and carbines. They are usually collecting rifles and shotguns.

You'll find that the data overwhelmingly supports that cheap semi-automatic handguns are responsible for the majority of shootings out there, despite the media coverage of mass shootings often using an AR-15.

> Oh, sorry; I'm sure you're entirely careful and responsible, all the time, just like every other firearms buyer. So there's clearly no problem with having an ever-increasing number of them around.

Fully agree.

And the better chances that one will be used intentionally to protect a productive and decent member of society from a violent criminal.

That's certainly the fantasy.

It is undisputed that there are a great many legitimate "defensive gun uses" per year.

How many is of great dispute, getting into minutiae all the way down to survey question branching due to an unbridgeable cultural gap, but please don't deny even the lowest estimates of tens of thousands.

The numbers are on the side of gun owners and advocates. I'd be inclined to think that competing theories based on feelings would be more fantastical... even if the surveys are off by two orders of magnitude, the defensive uses outweigh mass shooting deaths.

You say fantasy, surveys say thing that happens hundreds of thousands of times per year in the US. I think I'll believe the surveys on this matter.