but simply SHOWING someone your holstered gun is considered brandishing. simply drawing your weapon can be considered brandishing. but it can also thwart people meaning to do harm

And in all those cases it would be illegal. The statement being made is that a good way to use your gun defensively is to break the law.

you insinuated that brandishing was only pointing a gun at someone, thus breaking one of the 4 fundamental safety rules.

In the original comment that I replied to it was unclear. (I’ve quoted that bit below.) I assumed he meant pointing it, and stayed with that assumption throughout the rest of the discussion. I see now I glossed over his clarification. So fair point I suppose, but I don’t think it changes the overall argument that there’s almost never a “good guy with a gun” around, which is at the top of the comment chain that the quoted comment below was replying to, and is the context for all this ensuing discussion.

The goal of defensive use of a gun isn’t homicide, you can’t compare that statistics

Independent of any argument about gun control, I absolutely agree with the comment at the top of the chain that it seems self-evident that private gun ownership in most parts of the country is doing more harm than good, and it seems exceptionally uncommon for a “good guy with a gun” to be the person who ends one of these shootings.

It’s also not particularly hard to find stories where the cops show up and shoot the “good guy with a gun” afterward when there IS one, so personally, I’d rather take my chances unarmed since I’ve concluded that: It’s statistically unlikely I’ll be in a shooting, even more unlikely that I’ll be able to do something about it if I am, and there’s a nonzero chance that if I do, the cops (edit: or some other “good guy with a gun”) will shoot me anyhow, thinking I’m the bad guy.

You and others can of course make a different decision, but let’s not pretend that “Good guy with a gun” stories are anywhere near as common as “bad guy with a gun” stories.