In rural areas folks own guns because they serve a useful purpose, like hunting, protecting livestock, scaring off birds, etc and typically don't think of them as weapons. They are more likely to grab a baseball bat (kept by the front door) or a 2 x 4, than grab a hunting rifle. Many of them own no handguns at all.
I would suggest that rural dwellers are more varied than that. While I have run into a few people here that fit the above, as my neighbors have opened up and trusted me more, I find that most here will grab an AR for a bump in the night. My one neighbor introduced me to two farther away neighbors, one of whom has the spare armor "for the neighborhood" and the other that literally has a 55gallon drum of 5.56, both for "in case the SHTF and everybody needs to arm up." They also told me where the roadblocks will be set up.
This is the Redoubt, so I think that has some influence on the local philosophy compared to say, rural Georgia. Just food for thought that you can't put "rural", or "urban" for that matter, into a single container. I'm betting, just from conversation, that one of my neighbors has no guns at all.
This rural dweller will grab his suppressed AR, along with, as required, NODs and armor for a bump in the day or night. I like to live by the philosophy that the BoR, Federalist Papers, and Founding Fathers all wanted and expected us to keep "military grade" weapons and equipment at hand.
EDIT: I should add that I have several "bump in the night" definitions, and up to this point, 80% of my bump in the night responses have been, between the sound and the dog's reaction, walking out the back door with either a flashlight, NODs, or, recently my awesome thermal scope to find that it's a skunk, coon, coyote, or fox (so more of a "wildlife curiosity bump in the night"). The other 20% have included a firearm because the bump was close enough that it could have been a coyote on my side of the fence. I haven't had a battle rattle bump in the night yet.