Check this out and see how it complies with conventional wisdom.  How many recent victims of moron/scum brutality in NZ would be unharmed today if they just might have been carrying?

From gunlaws.com, January 2012

After several decades of experience with CCW permits and discreet carry, police nationwide understand and operate just fine within a framework of millions of people travelling armed. Slow waiters are all still alive. Dodge City has no blood in its streets. Stop signs don't have stacks of road-rage victims. Something else has happened.

As the numbers of people carrying arms for crime control increases assaultive crime has decreased. The media generally calls this “a surprising decrease in crime that has the experts baffled.” All these good people are walking around armed, expressly to forestall crime, and the media can’t understand why crime has dropped.

Maybe a chart will help. The blue line represents the number of people with CCW permits, increasing constantly over time. The red line is violent crime, dropping while more guns are in people's hands. The correlation is dead obvious. The idea that more guns lead to more crime is again proven false. In fact, it is the opposite of reality. This is what we're dealing with in the struggle to protect rights -- a large body of people, driven largely by the media, whose perception of reality is exactly opposite of what it actually is. More guns means less crime, because guns save lives. Guns protect you. Guns are good.