Your opinion is as valid as mine.

Funny you say that.

But I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on your ALICE training when you grew up with guns, competed with firearms and occasionally carried.

It was consistent with what I learned being trained in firearms safety growing up. The last option you take is fighting back. It is always safer to escape, avoid, rather than confront. No matter how confident you are with a firearm, your first priority is safety and defense, not offense. You are not law enforcement. Your role is not to attack. ALIVE training was consistent with this.

From my experience within the community those who carry are used to taking care of things themselves

The fuck does this mean but some bravado bullshit? If I carried on my person? Dude, if I'm at work I don't have my gun on me. It's locked in the fucking safe where it belongs. If I am in public, I am safer moving away from violence, not towards it. What nutty video game world do you think we live in? The only time you attack the assailant is when you have no other choice, and it is much more likely in that situation that he is outgunning me and out armored than my sidearm. So yes, I'll throw a fucking chair at them rather than shoot. To shoot at someone I need to put myself out in the open against someone who probably has better than anything I would ever be able to carry.

Seriously dude?