Hmmm...

In what way am I being self-righteous?

I honestly don't know how. Maybe self-righteous doesn't mean what you think it does?

I'm probably just a nudge left of the NRA in my opinions on gun laws but I'll stick to my guns that most gun owners aren't making any kind of accurate assessment on the dangers of gun ownership.

They are like people who own pools who refuse to acknowledge that the ownership of such pools increases the likelihood of someone they intimately know drowning.

Like ecib said, feeling safe and being safe are two different things.

Forgive me if I'm going to blow off Hubski's resident gunsplainer for citations of information that is a google search away if he gave a shit. I don't expect a reasonable cost benefit analysis of a guy who's analysis of risk is

It's also stupid from a self-defense standpoint, since someone who wants to start stuff is going to target the open-carrier first,

otherwise known as the gun owners wet dream, or an event so unlikely it's asymptotic with zero.

I've known two maybe three gun owners who wouldn't have made the situation more dangerous last time I was the victim of a gun crime. They go to the range once a month, get special training one to two times a year and have a mind and skill set that has primed them to unhesitatingly shoot a man to death. Most gun owners are jerking off in gun grease imagining the day they are going to save the day but are in now real way prepared to do so.

Maybe your the kind of guy who goes to the range and gets training, keeps the key to the gun safe out of harms reach, will never blow your head off during a dark night of the soul, isn't going to get spooked and blow away his wife or kid when they go bump in the night and has an even enough demeanor that he would never pull his gun out for another reason than to kill someone who presented a direct threat to his life. If so good on you. Most people think they are that guy, and enough gun owners aren't that owning a gun can be a dangerous proposition.