But what about when you need the gun quickly because of the burglar/home invader?
(This was sarcasm. I don’t take anyone seriously who with a straight face says it’s a good idea to have a gun at home for “protection”. No, there won’t be a home invader. And no you aren’t going to be better of with a gun if there is. But there isn’t.)
But seriously, SoL. It's like the Norwegian police keeping their guns locked in their patrol cars. If you don't have your tools on you when you need them, as critical situations occur very quickly, they're useless and you might as well not even have them.
If a veteran, or anyone, is suicidal or experiencing deep depression, they shouldn't have firearms around until they get better in the first place. When people get better, then give them back. Another problem in the US is there isn't any comprehensive healthcare or mental healthcare, so veterans and anyone else just falls through the cracks and isn't recognized to have their firearms taken away temporarily unless they make specific threats of harm or self-harm.
Baseball bats, batons, chef knives, box cutters, and OC spray are good enough for 99% of home defense needs. Let's say a tiny, tiny fraction of home invaders have firearms and are willing to engage in a firefight; most thieves just want valuables and don't want a fight and it's unlikely to have a home invasion unless people know someone stockpiles cash or valuables at home. The primary advantages of firearms are range and safety that comes with it if used properly and skillfully to stop a specific, imminent deadly threat. If someone is well-practiced with a firearm AND they encounter a rare situation where some drugged-out crazy or gang is trying to kill them, then and only then would having a firearm help the situation. Not having one seems likely to be fatal in those sort of edge-case circumstances where preparation could've saved them. The balance is only letting responsible, trained and continuously training, trustworthy, and mentally-stable individuals keep firearms.. everyone else who doesn't practice regularly keeping them for a "what if" or has issues definitely shouldn't have them.
I looked into the trope that "you're more likely to accidentally kill or be killed by your own gun than to use it to protect yourself" a while ago, and found it was wrong.
I think maybe the creator of that trope was including suicides, which is misleading and I'd argue just plain wrong. According to [0], there are about 50,000 self-defense uses of a firearm per year. [1] suggests there are about 4-500 accidental firearms deaths per year in the U.S. (and I'd bet many of those are "accidental" in that the decedant's family wanted it classified as an accident for insurance and / or religious reasons).
Any way you slice it, the rate of actual accidental deaths is really, really low. Not something to worry about at all if you're okay with things like...driving to work (about 30x riskier in aggregate per year assuming half of U.S. households have a gun [edit: and assuming everyone has the same risk of death by car accident, of course]).
Oh, and when you're thinking about "gun injuries" it's important to keep in mind that the vast majority are things like small burns, injuries to the web between the thumb and pointer finger caused by exposed hammers, things like that. Some places have enacted laws with harsh penalties for doctors saying that any injury resulting from using a gun must be reported as a firearm-related injury or some such, which of course artificially inflates the numbers and makes it difficult to differentiate between "someone was accidentally shot and survived" and "little Timmy burned his hand on Grandpa's .22".
I was curious too. The FBI provides nationwide numbers for 2019: ~268k robberies, of which 16% occurred at a residence, so ~43k. [1]
The National Institute for Mental Health says that ~24k suicides are inflicted with with firearms in 2018. [2]
Hard to figure out how many robberies might have been "resolved" by an armed homeowner, but I note the FBI says that there were only 334 "Justifiable Homicides" by civilians using firearms in 2019. [3]
Thanks for looking up these numbers. I have looked in to it before, and found [0], which implies about 50,000 self-defense uses of a firearm per year. Of course, not every self-defense use involves firing a shot, and not every shot fired ends up with a death.
(This was sarcasm. I don’t take anyone seriously who with a straight face says it’s a good idea to have a gun at home for “protection”. No, there won’t be a home invader. And no you aren’t going to be better of with a gun if there is. But there isn’t.)