Imagine yourself being accidentally in the middle of this melee and before you can safely detach yourself from the “festivities” you are targeted.
And by now mu experience has told me that “shooting a couple of rounds in the air” will not convince most of the attackers that is a bad idea to engage the guy with the gun. As we saw with Kyle Rittenhouse, some idiots actually appeared to be attracted to becoming stupidly perforated and became so.
Depending on my EDC of the day, I my ammo load will be from 37 to 46 rounds in three magazines: one in the gun and two spares.
Two is one and one is none. Carry spares to spare your life.
Re Rittenhouse being gone after even though he had a gun, I wonder if this is a variant of the Kung Fu Panda effect. (Or perhaps Last Action Hero.) In tv / movies / popular culture, only the bad guys are really hurt by guns. And who is the villain in their own mind?
Meh. Need more coffee. But to answer the titular question, because more "Stop that!" is better "Stop that!"
carry spares so if the mag in the firearm breaks you aint down to a single shot pistol…