Most young street thugs are poor marksmen and incompetent handlers of firearms. They carry semi-autos in their waistbands with the hammer cocked and shoot themselves in the leg or worse. They aim by holding the gun sideways and over their head. Many of the guns they use are the kind people on this board would not lower themselves to fire. Guns blow up in their faces because they have loaded the wrong ammo. And the street shooters also think entirely differently from people who have been acculturated into anything close to the mainstream of society. The fact that many thousands of them get blown away annually over trivial disputes is an indication of how utterly inept they are in life. Most of them routinely use drugs, too, which further constrains their already distorted cognitive functioning.
Their favorite pastime is committing the stupidest crimes in the world—impulsive, unplanned, highly dangerous, often videotaped armed robberies in which they risk long prison sentences for hundred-dollar scores. Invariably they wind up dead or in prison.
You want to encounter these people about as much as you want to meet a pack of rabid dogs. They relish violence and don't consider the consequences; they do not make rational decisions. Anyone with any brains will stay away from places where he might encounter them. Unfortunately, in most large U.S. cities there are hundreds if not thousands of such people. The one ameliorating factor is that they usually have a difficult time functioning outside their familiar environment.
That being said, about 10 years ago some armed New York City thugs, apparently unaware of the city's strict gun laws, held up a McDonald's late at night, ordered the employees into the back room, made them kneel, and shot each one in the head. Five young men and women died, and eventually the perps were caught and sentenced to watch TV and play cards for many years.
In a more recent case, this time in Alabama, armed thugs (I think it was three) held up a fast-food place, took the cash in the register, and made the patrons hand over their wallets and purses. But when they ordered everyone into the back room, a man who had already given up his wallet opened fire with his licensed handgun, took the thugs down, and undoubtedly saved several innocent lives, including his own. Notice that this citizen was willing to let the thugs get what they wanted if doing so prevented violence, but he was smart enough to know what was coming when they ordered him to the back room. He certainly benefited from the fact that he was able to think about the situation before blasting away, and he took the thugs down in their order of priority.
In New York City, he would have been prosecuted for possessing an illegal gun, though probably not for shooting the thugs, depending on the, uh . . . politics of the situation. Don't laugh—it's happened.
This is why we carry. Not to right wrongs. Not to travel to Newark and walk around hoping to administer justice. It is so that when we're ordered into that back room, we have a fighting chance.