That's not the real relationship tree. Mass gun ownership leads to fear. Fear may lead to politeness and caution, but only because of the fear. It may also lead to a 'fight or flight' type response, and things might escalate quickly beyond where anyone wanted them to be...

If you want to structure society around fear, that is (I guess) a country's prerogative, but it's not something I (as a non-American) would ever support.

wasn't this story about the police being polite, and then later entering... cautiously?

This hasn't been my experience fwiw as someone who moved from a non-gun country to the US. To be honest where I live (Montana) guns really aren't a problem. At least not the kind of problem that makes it a win to require Democrat candidates to support additional gun control measures. I think it's not unrealistic to imagine that we could completely dispense with the crazy Republicans if only democrats would drop gun control, it's such a wedge issue. Imagine that: Trump would never have happened, in exchange for not pursuing gun laws that probably wouldn't have achieved anything.

Ha! It leads to verbal confrontations escalating to murders instead of fistfights.

Mass gun ownership also increases gun ownership among fools and incompetents who leave their guns in places where they can be stolen and introduced into the black market.

Or even where 4 year olds discharge the parents weapons into their 5 year old siblings - accidentally more or less. I’ve seen a few cases like that

NYC makes it very easy to own and cancel a handgun. I've never heard it of it's residents being polite.

I though NYC is a very difficult place to own and conceal a handgun (legally).

Oh, it’s impossible to do legally.

Which doesn’t stop NYC having many, many guns being concealed carry. Because of you are looking to commit violent crimes, what’s another felony vs. having the power of life and death over victims?

And if you are a likely target of violent crimes, what’s a concealed carry felony vs. being dead or having a family member assaulted or murdered because you couldn’t stop it?