I always travel with my carry gun and usually a secondary (either a takedown rifle or a larger revolver). I personally will not travel to a place that doesn't honor the Constitution but that's just my personal choice. I'm not bashing anyone who personally chooses not to have a firearm (I do have a problem if you want to take away that choice for others). If you don't think you could take a human life or don't think you could act effectively in a high stress situation, those are good reasons not to be armed. If you want to travel and be in places where you can't legally be armed, well that's your choice, you might decide it's worth the relatively small risk of being unarmed if something happens in exchange for traveling to a place you really want to go. If you just don't want the responsibility, legal hassle and extra security risk (leaving it in a vehicle where it could be stolen for example) of having a firearm around, or maybe you just travel light and don't have much to lose then I'm not going to say you're dumb for making that choice. I can respect all of those positions. However there seems to be an ignorant faction in the overlanding community that thinks it's some kind of macho thing to be unarmed and that it's cowardly to carry a gun ECT. They propagate a number of myths. The first one being, that if someone has a gun, then that's the first and only way they deal with anything. That somehow someone being armed only escalates a situation even if the person you're dealing with doesn't know you're armed. The fact is that a person carrying a gun can do everything an unarmed person can, they can talk there way out of something, they can run away, they can avoid a bad situation ECT. I guarantee that most of us in the US have crossed paths with armed people many times and had no idea. The second one is that "people skills" or "street smarts" are better than being armed. Of course if someone is trying to steal something petty or something you may be able to talk them down or give them what they want. But what if that they want is to rape you, murder you, kill your loved ones or steal your vehicle and leave you stranded in the wilderness. Many murderers/rapists/kidnappers don't make sense, you can't talk them down. Not far from where I live a group of kids were hanging out in a state park at night (yes it was closed, they shouldn't have been there) and three brothers came up and murdered them, no one really knows why. The third and most ignorant myth of all, that I see surprisingly often, is something to the effect of "I don't need a gun, I got big balls" or "I fight like a man" or "it takes bigger balls to not carry a gun". This is so beyond stupid, it's like saying "I don't wear a seatbelt in a car or a helmet on a motorcycle because I'm a man" ... ok I hope that makes you feel better if you die. I personally have only had one sketchy experience, it was while sleeping along side a hwy on a long leg of a trip. During the night I hear a car slow down, turn around and pull up behind us. We are laying down in the back of the Jeep with the doors locked, our bags are sitting in the front seats and a cooler, gas can and spare tire are sitting alongside the rig. I stay laying down pretending to be asleep to see what happens as the cars headlights are shining in and I can't see who's in the other vehicle. My pistol is right next to the sleeping mat by my head. A scrawny guy covered with horrible tattoos and no shirt on jumps out and starts looking around the Jeep, pretty obviously impaired in some way. I sit up with my hand near the gun and yell "hey" out the window, I think he about had a heart attack. He said a bunch of nonsense and mentioned being out of gas (his vehicle was obviously still running) I offered him the gas can and he took it and left. I wasn't interested in escalating the situation over a gas can but had he intended to steal the vehicle or something I would have been in a position to stop him.
