More than 3,600 people were killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Between 1969 and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 about 2,000 civilians, 1,000 members of the security forces and 600 paramilitaries died.
Unfortunately most were civilians.
The term "civilian" can be overly broad. For example, someone not actively fighting but still providing supplies or arms to one faction or another might be classified as a civilian, but they would still be at greater risk than someone not affiliated with any factions or security forces at all. Likewise, someone who works at a military base, police station, or other such facility would likely be classified as a civilian but would also be at greater risk than someone who works at a department store, restaurant, or other such unaffiliated private business.
If we break down the numbers you provided in your first post, we find that on average just over 124 people were killed per year during "The Troubles" (this is assuming that The Troubles lasted for 30 years). Assuming a population of 2,000,000 people (again, a number taken from you original post), that breaks down to a murder rate of approximately 6.2 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate (murder and non-negligent manslaughter) in 1998 (the last year of The Troubles) was 6.3 per 100,000 people which was lower than any year since 1991 (the rate in 1991 was 9.8 per 100,000) according to the FBI.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls
The fact that Northern Ireland's homicide rate was lower than that of the U.S. despite The Troubles further indicates that random acts of violence were (and probably still are) rare. This would make sense because the various factions in play during The Troubles needed at least a certain degree of support amongst the population in order to sustain themselves. While religion was undoubtedly a large factor in these various groups' support amongst the populace, random victimization of innocent, unaffiliated people is consistent with neither Catholic nor Protestant beliefs and I very much doubt that the majority of the populace, Catholic and Protestant alike, would have been able to rationalize such tactics for very long.
Also, there are other types of violent crime besides homicide and assault. Rape is another violent crime that comes to mind and one that would more likely be a random act rather than associated with The Troubles or a similar political upheaval. In 2010/11, there were 525 recorded rapes in Northern Ireland.
http://www.psni.police.uk/1._10_11_recorded_crime.pdf
Again assuming a population of 2 million people, that breaks down to a rape rate of 26.25 per 100,000 while the U.S. rape rate was higher 29.1 and 27.5 for 2009 and 2010 respectively.
The reason that these statistics are pertinent to the discussion is because you inferred with your original post that, because Northern Ireland is a more dangerous place to live than the U.S., you could not understand why people in the U.S. feel the need to carry a gun on and about their person when such a practice is, in your opinion, unnecessary in Northern Ireland. The problem is that, statistically, Northern Ireland is not a more dangerous place than the United States is so your line of thinking falls apart.
More importantly, however, gun laws are a rather poor predictor of violent crime rates from one country to another. While I don't have the figures handy at the moment, I compared the violent crime rates of the United States to those of the United Kingdom as a whole, Australia, and Switzerland for a research paper a few years ago. What I found was that the UK (which has much more restrictive firearms laws throughout most of the country than does most of the U.S.) had a substantially lower violent crime rate, Australia (which also has more restrictive gun laws than the U.S.) had about the same violent crime rate, and Switzerland (which has gun laws that are less restrictive than the U.S. in many ways) had a lower violent crime rate than any of the other three countries compared. The conclusion that I came to at that time was that gun laws and violent crime rates did not correlate and that other factors had just as much, if not more, effect on violent crime than gun laws.
The bottom line is this, not everyone feels the need to carry a gun and that's O.K., but please don't judge me because my choice is different than yours. While I try to avoid trouble and live as low-risk a lifestyle as I possibly can, my personal experiences have shown me that, in spite of my best efforts, trouble can find me on occasion and that carrying a means of protecting myself is a prudent thing to do. I really cannot explain it any further without divulging more personal information than I care to on a public forum, but it's a personal choice and not one that I take lightly.
//all the best, gunz//