I know of people who have been threatened. Car jacking comes to mind. My next door neighbor's son was at a stop light in Milwaukee when a young man stood in front of his car with a gun, motioning the boy get out of the car. The boy reached over and flashed his own gun which got the would be thief out of the way. When I have a gun in the car I am going to the farm with wildlife issues. A coyote seldom waits for me to politely ask him to drop one of my chickens. The insane migration going on in the world might be cause for fear. But our second amendment was written not only for hunting but to protect us from danger and an over reaching government originally. Now the government barely remembers the Constitution it seems.
I am not sure @Thomas Terry doesn't like gun owners but people from Japan, Europe etc are not given the choice to be one or not, easily. But I have read many times of vicious stabbings in places like England and explosions in the middle east.. I am surprised they have not made a law against knives.
I think some knives are illegal in the UK and some of Europe, just as they are the NYC. I once read that the most frequent arrest made by the NYPD were of tourists carrying folding pocket knives. Certainly TSA doesn't allow them.
I could be mistaken about it, but whenever someone implies that a gun owner is paranoid / scared, I get the impression they are trying to make them seem less than "normal."
That's a fair point; but then, gun ownership is something other than normal in many countries and even parts of the United States.
But it's an absurd assumption to jump from "gun owner" to "scared." I guess I've watched too much Downton Abbey, but it seems to me that the upper crust of GB has an affinity for guns and hunting. Even Queen Elizabeth was a hunter.