Except he was in fact he was implying that, as the text implies that, which is why I ignore both...
Or you are playing in a world where it is the wild west of the movies, and everyone opens fire on everyone else for the fun of it... Because hey why not, they didn't give us these guns as fashion accessories... or wait, they did, but also because shooty..... everyone walks around in metal gear all the time, because it;s the minimum required to get to work, and while you are working... and really you can sleep in it too provided you lock your concrete doors at night...
I mean seriously sard, if you take everything in the book at face value, and don't weed out the sillier bits, then your world is pretty much unsirvivable by anyone but edgerunners, which means you ARE talking GTA online, with lobbies of thousands...
Don't go to any actually dangerous countries, if you think this is true. And that's not what I was implying, that every night there is a bloodbath. What I said was this: "This ain't Grand Theft Auto. Everyone is armed, lots have cyberware and some people even have professional killers from the world's vast supply of same working for them cheap.
Man. I CANNOT WAIT until the world gets a taste of Cyberpunk 2077. "I'm gonna steal this dude's car! It looks ama..ohmigod! Aggh!"
Dark Souls for the GTA set. "
How do you get "bloodbath" from that? It means, unlike in GTA, if you try to steal someone's CAR, you could easily get shot, since odds are very high the owner is armed and/or has protection.
Pretty clear.
As for your "two outcomes" view, just no. Zimbabwe. Joahnnesburg. In Phnom Penh, the security guards carried Ak-47s. I wanted to carry myself, and I'm not about to go murdering people. Or Beirut. Did you know the rate of firearm ownership, private, in the US right now is 101 per 100 persons? http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states#rate_of_civilian_firearm_possession Canada stands at number 12 to teh USA #1, still a lot of guns up here.
People with guns don't just kill each other for fun. Why would you have that idea? And a gun doesn't mean you are a scumbag or a lawabider, it might just mean in Cyberpunk 2020 that there is a reasonable chance you will need to defend yourself before the underfunded, beleaguered Night City police department can get there.
This is not a pro or anti gun statement. I am refuting your idea that in either a) the real world or b)Night City, having a population with a near 100% firearm ownership, as the books clearly and reasonably state, complete with supporting arguments,leads to some kind of nightly bloodbath or an unplayable, unrealistic world.
I mean that, if CDPR implements the game world as designed by Mike Pondsmith, I hope they make it clear this is not GTA and that you cannot "just" hijack someone's car. It could easily get you shot for trying. You may be an Alpha Predator, but you aren't bulletproof in 2020. Be careful or be dead.