I have nowhere near @josie‘s experience, training (or youth), but I share his mindset.
I don’t have a gun, though I have experience shooting handguns and low-caliber rifles. I enjoy shooting, and I’m casually competent (you shouldn’t read from those words that I treat weapons casually!). I may get a shotgun someday as I get older or if the neighborhood deteriorates around me before I move out (as long as I’m competent to use it, can still see well, have the strength to manage and aim it, etc.), but that’s a ways off, I think.
On the other hand, I have given thought to “how would I defend myself?” if the need arose today or tonight. (Here in Connecticut, obtaining a CCW permit is very difficult, and obtaining a handgun permit just to legally keep a gun in the house and transport it to a range to practice is not simple or automatic. The laughable part of “gun control laws”, of course, is that there is no lack of illegal weapons, for those – unlike me – who don’t much care about the law or legal consequence. More laws make that mix worse over time, but no one seems to get that, because we keep passing more laws, and things are not getting less violent because of that.)
So I think sometimes, just as an exercise in “what if” of how to weaponize things that are not generally regarded as weapons. I have cans of wasp spray near my bed, on my desk at work, and in the car, even though I don’t have any significant problems with wasps. The cans will shoot a concentrated stream over 25’, and when that hits an attacker in the face it will temporarily blind him. I have a nice little wrecking bar right under the front seat of my car, which I can use at close quarters if necessary. I have a short, lightweight baseball bat at my bedroom door, which I pick up when Willow alerts in the night. And of course I have Willow. She’s a peaceful little dorg, but she’s always alert.
I like the idea of non-lethal response when that is possible and when that would drive off or stop (completely stop, not just delay) an attack. But I’d have no problem killing someone who obviously intended me or mine great harm directly and immediately, and I’ve also given thought to how I would recognize that. I try to be alert. We need more lerts.