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we have the same here. I live minutes from the largest city in Canada with a general population of close to 7 million. We have all the same issues that you have , have the the Russian,Asian, Italian mafias , every gang under the sun with mob and gang people targeted all the time. there are stories every day of drug busts and guns seized, we have shootings in high crime low income areas daily. we have meth labs, no different than you. this summer A kid up my street was arrested for stealing and dealing coke and meth , 3 cop cars on a Sunday morning on his lawn. A grow op around the corner that I walk the dogs by every day with my son. its all just noise and Nobody feels the need to be armed in self defense and we still have some of the lowest gun deaths in the world. Many do own guns for recreational use but they are locked away as is the ammo. There are home invasions and in almost 100% of the cases nobody is killed , the perps get what they want and leave even if they have guns which in many cases they dont. Now if there were homeowners carrying a loaded weapon that's not likely to be the case..... somebody is probably going to be shot likely on both sides of the equation.... fact remains that you have a far greater chance of choking at dinner than being subject to a home invasion. Add to that that only 1/100 home invasions occur when people are at actually at home and of that tiny percentage only 7% of that 1 percent were the victim of a violent crime , even less were actually killed. I cant be convinced that guns are needed or help in any way. it IS nothing more than paranoia. heck I dont even have a home security system and never have but they are commonly used. I am glad you store your guns properly. Its the law up here, they cannot be outside of the locker only to be transported with mandatory trigger locks and when that is the case they cannot be loaded. its a criminal offense to carry a concealed weapon, many types are outright banned completely and that common sense translates to significantly less guns, less gun deaths which we are happy about and laws that nobody complains about . this all obviously helps and saves many of the gun deaths that rsvman references . almost all of the banned weapons that are used and confiscated in Canada and used in many of the violent crimes are tracked back to coming from the US.