I used to want a gun for self defense. Then I took a martial arts class in college. The teacher was also a police consultant. He told us: "People with guns kill people with guns. People with guns don't kill people without guns." That is, if someone breaks into your house with a gun, and you pull a gun on them, they're going to shoot you if you don't shoot them first. Fifty-fifty you're dead. They have a gun and you don't, they don't shoot you. They take your stuff. Maybe they beat you up. Maybe they even rape you. But they don't kill you. I've never worked with the police. But I'm inclined to believe him. My 2ยข.
I'm in pretty good shape. My suit jacket fit is "athletic". But I'm not a big enough guy to bank on physical dominance in hand-to-hand combat, and I'm untrained in martial arts, other than watching The Karate Kid at least 20 times. I do feel like my odds are better than fifty-fifty, at least confined to a one-on-one confrontation. I've gone through all the scenarios in my head, and there seems to be a net advantage of owning a firearm. If it's just my stuff they're after, I don't really care. It's the idea of them harming the love of my life that's going to get them in some pretty deep shit.
Not talking about you here, but with many people, the simple fact of owning a gun seems to mess with their judgement. Back on reddit, there was this "AskReddit" thread about who had killed someone and how they felt about it. Two stories stuck with me. The first guy woke up and heard two men in his living room. He grabbed his gun and went to investigate. The guys who were in the process of taking some of his stuff heard the noise and one of them told the other: "Shit, someone's here. Let's get the fuck out!". At this point, one of them was shot and killed by the homeowner. The other managed to get out. Had there been no gun involved, nobody would have been hurt. Second guy also wakes up one night and there is someone messing around in his family's house. Family's on vacation. He thinks it might be his uncle, so he calls out: "Hello?". The intruder, definitely not his uncle, responds by rushing at him with a knife. Second guy turns around, runs for his bedroom, grabs his gun and manages to shoot the madman, who dies before emergency services arrive. Had no gun been involved, a perfectly normal guy would've been stabbed by an insane burglar. Moral of those stories? No idea.