And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important…

The police are the cleanup crew, those first 5-10 minutes you’re on your own.

The danger of owning a firearm, especially if it is always armed for such an occurrence, is more dangerous to the household than the risk of home invasion (which again, is rare). It is an idea that people defend using the concept of "safety", but in reality is motivated by fear or hypermasculinity as the main cause.

You seem to not understand that gun owners train how to use firearms, and a proper one will practice high levels of gun safety in a home. Sure, there's going to be morons who own them and make the news. But it's not a toy or for fun. Just as they find out.

No worries, the “hyper-masculine” men with badges will come save you. I have no problem with you wanting to take your chances and let someone with evil intent to have their way with you or your loved ones. Just don’t try and take the ability to defend, from others, because you have a problem with masculinity.

You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0]. You may disagree with many of them, but some are absolutely defensible, like an ex-boyfriend breaking into woman's apartment and beating her until she is able to shoot him[1][2] (from the front page of that subreddit).

My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare.

  0. https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu
  1. https://kfor.com/news/local/oklahoma-woman-shoots-and-kills-ex-boyfriend-during-break-in/
  2. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/wickliffe-woman-shoots-boyfriend-after-being-struck-multiple-times-boyfriend-later-arrested

I get the feeling you have that problem in reverse. All defensive gun use is very rare. Certainly, rarer than the opposite (offensive gun use). Combined with suicide risk and accidental deaths or injuries, it is rarely justifiable. Study on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/

The CDC reports 60,000 to 2.5M instances of defensive gun use per year[0]

0. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm....

The numbers regarding defensive gun use is very likely to end up being a classic example of commercial interests affect scientific research. Nearly all of the high numbers come from a handful of sources that have connections with the firearm industry. There are many methodology problems with their numbers too.

In the relatively small amount of research on this subject that is not influenced by commercial interests, the numbers suggest that defensive gun use is very rare: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...

So the evidence linked on the CDC website is compromised because of commercial interests? Please post evidence of this specific example.

> You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0].

Of course there are cases of defensive gun use. But there are also cases of idiotic gun use:

> Deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office arrested three people after one man was shot. Investigators said the shooting victim was shot after an argument about the victim’s alleged littering.

* https://www.wkrg.com/northwest-florida/escambia-county/man-s...

> Houston man accused of shooting restaurant workers over BBQ sauce

* https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/02/26/houston-...

> A Utah father was taken into custody after police said he told his 4-year-old child to fire at officers following a dispute over an order at the McDonald's drive-thru in Midvale.

* https://kutv.com/news/local/suspect-in-custody-after-shootin...

Examples taken from:

* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_

Right across the US border Canada manages to have a safe society without everyone packing heat. And it's not like gun ownership is unheard of in Canada, given it's 7th in per capita ownership:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

For tracking mass shootings, the US has a separate Wikipedia page for each calendar year:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

Meanwhile the list of massacres (not even all being shootings) fits on one page for Canada:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Canada

The idea that firearms make one safer, either at home:

* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...

or in public:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/

does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.

> And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important…

Firearms in the home actually increase your odds of death:

> Access to firearms is associated with risk for completed suicide and being the victim of homicide.

* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...

Specific examples of domestic violence against women:

* https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000522/guns-domestic-violenc...

There's one study that showed that even carrying a gun on your person increases your likely hoot of being shot:

> Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/

Generally, the idea that firearms make one safer in the home does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.

Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves. I don't care if someone is stupid with a weapon. You can find occurrences of a weapon, tool, vehicles, any object, being used improperly and in an unsafe manner that can cause harm or death.

All you illustrate is that being a responsible gun owner is important (which is not debated whatsoever in any firearms community.) The vast majority of law abiding gun owners are responsible with their weapons.

> Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves.

The numbers seem to indicate that having a gun is actually more detrimental, on a 'net' basis, to one's well-being than not having a gun. Having a gun is more dangerous for you and yours:

> But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-...

> We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...

> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/

Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?

Also all the studies you've cited don't prove causality, they prove correlation. Maybe it's the other way around? Maybe living in a more dangerous place increases the likelihood of people owning guns?

> Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?

If you don't want you or a family member to become a firearms statistic don't own a gun, especially since owning one doesn't seem to be useful against strangers:

> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/