While I agree gun ownership may help the individual gun owner, from a sociological standpoint, gun ownership wouldn't affect crime rates much, and would do more to escalate the magnitude of crimes. A disillusioned student might bring a knife to school and stab a kid who then needs stitches. With guns, they can bring in an assault rifle and mow down a classroom. A man might rob a bank by punching cashiers and stealing property. When things settle down, there is blunt physical trauma but very little death, the robber is apprehended, jailed, and heavily fined, and insurance largely takes care of lost property as per usual. With guns, several people are killed, the property is stolen, then police show up to an armed robbery, get to open fire, bystanders are often injured or even killed in police fire, the robber is now dead so now there is additional legal action on that front, insurance has WAY more to cover, and the whole thing went from an almost petty crime to a national news worthy total fiasco with dozens of casualties. A person comes up to steal your car. You two get in a scuffle. Maybe they overpower you and take your car. Could a gun have helped? Probably. But chances are, the criminal also has a gun. One of you is now probably going to die. You switched from likely losing your car (which can be covered by insurance and legal action) to likely losing your life. The main benefit I see is where the population is rural and sparse. Crime is generally less organized and guns are able to de-scale most petty property crimes.

One of the most often answers to this is 'Just call the police' but this is assuming that police are always trustworthy. Not only that but police only come after the crime has been committed, they aren't much use at actually stopping the crime itself, only catching criminals after the fact. We can see videos of home intruders running at the very sight of a gun, showing that the threat of being shot is a greater deterrent than being arrested. Realistically, how many criminals are caught anyway? We can also see statistics in the US of the rate of violent crime dropping as gun ownership increases. As right to carry laws are introduced across the country, violent crime rates drop. This isn't coincidence as the rate plumments immediately after adopting these laws, showing that the risk of being shot is not worth the reward. If each country has a nuclear deterrent against war, why does that same logic not apply to individuals carrying guns?