There are so few threat scenarios where you would actually have time to pull a gun to save your life that packing may not be worth the trouble. But after carrying for two years I would feel like I was walking around in my underwear if I didn't have a gun on. So I think of it as accoutrements. Got keys? Cellphone? Money clip? Wristwatch? Pistola? Reload?
Back in the 90's a friend of mine was in the Buckhead area of Atlanta one evening with a date. A guy walks up to them with a knife and demands money. My friend opened his jacket and showed his pistol, didn't even pull it out of the holster. The guy ran like a jack rabbit. I don't carry extra magazines on my person normally. Although I have some stashed at various places, glove box for example. An in depth study showed in a shootings shooters on average fire 2.6 rounds each.
Do not fire off a Desert Eagle inside a car without ear muffs! One guy did that and he said his ears rang for days... Hmmmm, the earmuffs are another argument supporting the notion that a Desert Eagle is more of a winter thingy...
If I thought that would work I'd just pull out my dick. Agreed about roughly five rounds per conversation. But I am always prepared for the worst case of two squads of Mexican paratroopers dropping in. My "reload" in the car is a rifle. Sold all my pistolas without safeties this week. Getting cautious in my old age, hoping to get older. The BGs will just have to wait one more second to be serviced.
I knew one old guy that did not believe in safeties, he kept rifles on the wall and the safeties were always off.... so his drunk son comes over, grabs a rifle and is going to shoot his own step-son. He figured that the safety was on so he slid it to what he thought was the off position and when he pointed it at the kid it would not fire. The kid pulled a fence post out of the ground and clubbed his step-dad with it and put him in a coma that lasted weeks... and the kid told me that his step-dad never threatened him after that.
Guess he lernt a lesson there to keep the safety off to defend himself. I never leave a rifle or shotgun chambered. Pistol goes off, probably nobody dies. Rifle or shotgun....