That logic makes some sense in rural areas where it's a safe assumption that many, if not most, homeowners are armed. Where I grew up, anybody thinking of break

That logic makes some sense in rural areas where it's a safe assumption that many, if not most, homeowners are armed. Where I grew up, anybody thinking of breaking into a house or even of trespassing had to contend with the very real possibility of being shot at; not only were guns common, but many people kept them loaded and readily accessible. But in areas where few law-abiding citizens are armed and most people have no inclination to arm themselves, all lax gun laws do is put more guns in the hands of high-risk individuals. In most of the incidents discussed in this thread pepper spray would have been more than sufficient to thwart an attacker, but nobody is carrying that, either. It's also worth pointing out that in rural areas you're rarely in a situation where you're in physically close proximity to potentially dangerous people. I suspect both urban and rural folks are similarly averse to escalating violence, but there's much more ambiguity in urban environments, which explains why people don't even bother carrying, let alone using, pepper spray in cities, whereas in extremely rural areas people keep loaded shotguns in the corner. That and violence is much less common than we believe, and we actually behave accordingly even though we say that we feel unsafe. The calculus is the same in both urban and rural areas, but the input parameters produce wildly different results.