guns

You have no way of knowing the exact threat posed to your kids by that mountain lion. Yeah, you can look up stats on mountain lion attacks, but at the end of the day, those aren't going to make you feel any better about a mountain lion being around your kids. Having guns in your house is also a risk. Again, though, you can only really look at statistics, and you can't know how they apply to your specific situation.

Beyond those risks/benefits, there's even more intangible ones. What's the risk/benefit for someone in Eastern Ukraine, or Gaza, or some other current or future occupied region, or victim of a repressive government?

That's what I mean about it being philosophical: there's just no way to quantitatively determine whether it's good for you to own guns or not. It really just comes down to doing what you think is best