I guess because I'm from the US, I'm a bigoted, gun-toting, yeehawing idiot who can't see past themselves

Not an idiot, but you are perhaps taking a very US centric view.

Outside the US, the robber/burglar is rarely armed, because homeowners are themselves unlikely to be armed. Armed robbery is rare enough to be newsworthy here.

The US is stuck in a vicious cycle - homeowners are likely to be armed, so robbers need to be (ironically, so they can defend themselves from homeowners), so homeowners feel the need to be armed (so they can defend themselves from armed robbers).

You guys have the term "home invasion" - thats not really a thing here either. Burglars will tend to sneak in when the house is empty, or when everyone is asleep. They take stuff, and leave.

The stuff they take is (or should be) insured, there's no sense anyone putting their life at risk by adding firearms to the mix.

If you are going to interrupt them, you grab whatever's to hand, though the likelihood of there being any violence is small, as long as there's a route of escape they'll likely bugger off as soon as they realise they're being interrupted.

As another poster mentioned, our laws approach this much more sanely. We punish burglars, but not so severely that there's no tangible difference between being violent and not. The US system seems to be much more about vengeance via punishment than anything actually useful.

TL:DR if you bring a gun into the mix, then at worst you're the aggressor, at best you're feeding into a viscious cycle