Why I don't carry a knife

I've carried a knife on and off over the years. I find that occasions on which I find I am in need of a blade that is small enough that I would reasonably want to keep it on my person, and can't actually find something suitable wherever I happen to be, are actually rather rare. They are significantly more rare than occasions on which I have to go through airport security, so it's a pain in the ass remembering I have to take my knife off my person, every time I have to go to the airport, and then remember to put it back on my person when I return from my trip. It's easier to simply not carry one on an everyday basis, and just bring one with me on very rare occasions when I am going camping.

Why I don't carry a gun

My mother was a sharpshooter (hobby, very high accuracy rating). My father was a sniper (marine corps). They started giving me gun training from the age of 3, and I don't just mean "this is a gun, keep away from it honey," I mean how to use it and how to maintain it and when to and when not to point it at someone. I tell you this by way of preface: I am not some fool mouthing off about something I know nothing about. I have owned five of them. I know how to use them.

A gun is useful for 3 things: hunting, target shooting, and killing people.

I live in a city. There are no deer wandering around that I might want to bag and take home to skin and butcher and put in the deep freeze to cook later. (I have no problem with hunting for food, I have family that do, I've eaten venison, it's just not part of city life.) We have squirrels, pigeons, seagulls, skunks, and the rare rabbit. I do not want to make squirrel stew, and anyway the cops would probably frown on me shooting the squirrels in the park near children. Pigeons are not good eating. Nor are seagulls. Do not even talk to me about eating skunks, and their pelts might make a pretty coat but would make my social life suffer. I like rabbits and don't want them dead. So, a gun would not be useful to me for hunting purposes.

I do not enjoy target shooting, and even if I did, there is no point to carrying a gun everyday for that purpose. People do not shoot skeet in the streets of the city: that's done in gun ranges, or on private property in the countryside, where either way I would make a special trip and would take a gun just for that one purpose on that one occasion. Or more likely I'd rent one at the gun range. So, a gun would not be useful to me for target shooting purposes.

That leaves killing people. Killing people is not, as a rule, a good idea. Worst case you get executed for it, best case you have to go to court and there's a lot of paperwork and people angry at you. Killing anyone who is not trying to kill me - or who is trying but has no chance at doing so - is highly immoral and I'm not going to even consider it. And one of the things my father the sniper rubbed in was, you do not point a gun at someone - or even remove it from the holster - unless you have already decided to kill them. Once you pull that gun, you are committed, because they can see that you can kill them, and they might pull out a weapon and kill you if you don't ensure they are dead or severely disabled before they have the opportunity. And even if you shoot someone to disable them, you have to be aware that any gunshot wound could possibly result in death. So you do not touch your gun until you are committed to the idea that it is better for them to die than for you to not shoot them.

But what if you get attacked?
I've been attacked three times. The first time was some pre-teen kids who tried to gaybash me. They hit me. Not very hard. I said "ouch". Shooting them would have been a massive overreaction, not to mention immoral, and I would have gone to jail for it. They were kids, dammit, they needed education, not a bullet in them. The second time was a nut who picked a fight with me because he imagined I had been rude to his girlfriend. He punched me in the jaw. I kicked him in the nuts. He left to go contemplate his new life as a soprano. Again, shooting him would have been a massive overreaction and I would have gone to jail for it, and he got what he deserved. The third time was a guy who very incompetently tried to mug me. He was so bad at it that I talked to him for a minute and he ran away from me, screaming in terror as he ran. Again, a gun would have done me no good, I would have gone to jail. So, despite being attacked several times, a gun would have been useless every time.

But what if someone tries to kill you?
It has happened. Eleven times, actually. I'm that weird outlier in the world, a person who has actually been subjected to multiple murder attempts. (I have a stalker who has tried to kill me six times, and have encountered a couple other random nuts, and I just barely missed being present at the first WTC bombing and the Boston Marathon bombing. Lucky me.) That's just not normal in the US, it's just absurd, it's so improbable that people often don't believe me. So anyway, I can speak from experience about surviving a murder attempt. I survived every time because every time I saw it coming and I got the hell out of there. Someone came at me with a gun? I ran the fuck away before they got it loaded. Someone tried to run me over with their car? I got the fuck off the road and into a spot where they'd have to go through a bunch of trees, or telephone poles, or lamp posts, to get to me. Someone bombed the place where I was going to be? I got lucky and changed my plans at the last minute. If I had a gun, could I have shot the person who came at me with a gun? Sure, I could have, but I didn't need to so that would have been immoral and I might have gone to jail. If she had gotten her gun loaded before I saw her, I'd have been dead and a gun would still not have helped me. (She later murdered someone else; she came up behind him and shot the back of his head off before he knew she was coming. Having a gun wouldn't have helped him either.) If I had a gun, could I have shot the people who tried to hit me with cars? No, of course not. First I was too busy diving off of the road so they couldn't hit me to pull out a gun and aim and shoot while being run over, and even if I'd hit them I'd still have been run over by their car, and afterward they were speeding away, and shooting someone as they depart would have been highly immoral and I would have gone to jail. And a gun certainly would have done me no good if I was present for the WTC bombing or the Marathon bombing. So, in none of the eleven times people have tried to kill me would a gun have ever been useful.

But what if someone breaks into your house?
It has happened. I stomped my feet and when they realized someone was home they ran off. Shooting them would have been a massive overreaction and I would have gone to jail.

But terrorism! Mass shootings!
As I said above, I've survived several terrorist events - by not being there. If I'd been there, in neither of those cases would I have had any opportunity to shoot the terrorists, and much more likely I'd have been injured or killed by the bomb. In a mass shooting situation, while I may be more qualified than the average bear to successfully shoot the shooter, I am definitely not qualified to determine who the shooter is. Research shows the general untrained public (and for this purpose that includes me) is quite remarkably bad at rapid target selection, and is far more likely to shoot an innocent person than the actual criminal. Yeah, maybe I could observe long enough to make a correct determination of who the shooter is, but doing so would involve sticking my head out long enough for them to kill me. Even if I thought the shooter wasn't looking my way, there could be another one behind me that I don't know about. Also, if I have pulled a gun and start shooting people I think are terrorists, and at that moment the cops burst in... they're going to shoot me dead, because I would be a guy with a gun in his hand. So, pulling a gun and shooting at people when you're trying to survive a mass shooting is an incredibly stupid thing to do, you're far more likely to kill an innocent or get killed than you are to end the situation. Observe the fact that in several recent mass shooting situations there actually was in fact an armed, trained professional present, who chose not to start shooting at the terrorist(s), because they knew they needed a bunch of backup to be successful. Far more successful strategies for surviving a mass shooting are to hide, play dead, or escape.

But what if something you haven't thought of happens and you need a gun?
Look, dude, owning a gun is a dangerous thing. Your gun is much more likely to be used to kill you or someone in your household - either by suicide (most probable form of gun death), or by someone in your household killing you or someone else in your household with it, probably by accident (less likely than suicide but still more likely than you ever using it to defend yourself). So, I kinda don't want that danger in my life. Moreover, my stalker who tried to kill me with a gun once was previously a very nice person, a cardiac intensive care nurse, an angel of mercy... who developed a mental illness and became a murderer. Frankly, there's no way to tell who is going to be fine all their life, and who is going to become psychotic, or schizophrenic, or suicidally depressed... so someone who seems a perfectly reasonable and safe person to allow to have a gun now might be a horribly dangerous person to allow to continue to have that gun a couple years from now. To me, that risk is far larger than the risk of "what if some bizzare highly improbable circumstance comes up for which you inexplicably find that the solution is a gun, and you don't have one on you at that exact moment?". It's just not worth my time to worry about.