Re-Post: Trussed to a Gun. When Size Isn't Everything!

Note: This is a post from more than two years ago. After the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords and the death of so many bystanders, I am wondering when we'll start to look at the right to stay alive as importantly as we seem to take the right to carry guns to political rallies. Now, once again, we're confronted by a massacre - this time by a person in a movie theatre in Aurora, Co.  I'm re-posting it because I still don't understand.

From an article in American Handgunner:

Since I carry a gun with me nearly all the time, I’m always looking at the options available with an eye toward balancing firepower and conceal-abiitly. For the last couple of years I’ve been trading off between a SW 340PD and a Springfield Armory subcompact XD in 9mm. I consider the little titanium J Frame SW a “must have” carry gun, and I have it with me whenever the need for concealability outweighs my perceived need for firepower. Not that the Federal 147-grain .38 +P loads lack sufficient power, the limitation of five rounds could be a drawback in a fight with six adversaries. In some situations, all I can conceivably carry is the little 11-ounce five-shot revolver. But, sometimes I need to carry more gun, even in a concealed carry situation, so I’ve been opting to carry the XD with 10 + 1 rounds of 147-grain Federal HST ammo. As compact guns go, I think it is a great balance between size and having enough rounds.

Who are these people? If I met them on the street, would I recognize them?

Is their paranoia so incredibly strong that they actually believe they are going to be confronted by six or more adversaries on some dark street? And if they actually live in a world where this kind of potential confrontation is likely, where exactly is it? Truly, I'd like to know.

Or are they simply responding to the product placement of guns that permeates our media in the U.S.?

I'm trying to figure it out. Are these people really under some kind of threat, or are they merely sensitively responding to the signals that are beamed from our culture?

Let me acknowledge that I've never been robbed at gun or knife-point; never felt threatened in a way that made me wish I had a gun. So, I acknowledge that my experience-level is slight. Yet my query is an honest one. Do we live, within the U.S., in a climate of danger so egregious that we must arm ourselves with concealed weapons all the time?

And if this is not reality, what should we do to help the people who feel so threatened that they say "Since I carry a gun with me almost all the time...."?

According to an article by Fareed Zakaria entitled "Time to face facts on gun control" the US has the most heavily armed citizenry in the world. We have 5% of the world's population, but 50% of the world's guns.  Our military budget in 2010, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, represented 42% of the entire world's expenditure on arms.  The pattern here is pretty obvious: We're addicted to guns!

Yet, the gun lobby would make us believe that the only way to be safe is to arm EVERYONE.  

When I consider that option, I think of the tragedies that cycle through our society, and our representative's inability to confront the issue squarely.  

In the article from American Handgunner, the author says "Since I carry a gun with me almost all the time, I’m always looking at the options available with an eye toward balancing firepower and conceal-ability."  The Aurora Colorado event is a celebration of this psychology. 

My continual question is "Why?"