I've only had one instance where I wish I'd had a gun at the ready and didn't - because I still had kids in the house my guns were locked away unloaded. One evening there was a guy beating the shit out of another guy who was already down on the street corner right outside my house. I didn't approach because of the possibilty the aggressor might have been armed himself and it took awhile to get him to stop by folks yelling at him & telling him the cops were on the way. It took 10 minutes or more for the cops to get there and by then it was all over; when seconds count the cops are minutes away. I don't think it would have been necessary to shoot the guy but if I'd drawn a bead on him and got close I think I could have convinced him to have stopped the beating much sooner or dropped him if he whipped out a piece of his own.