In my 40 years, there was exactly one time I needed to defend myself, and a gun probably would have made the situation worse. I would have had too little time to draw it, and likely it would have been wrestled away from me and used against me. The people who attacked me had no weapons (or at least none they felt they needed to show me), so a gun would have escalated things.
I walked away from that with a black eye and stolen phone and laptop, but if a gun had been in play I might not have walked away at all.
You shouldn't have a gun except for things you care about more than your and others' lives. Having one makes it far more likely for a violent encounter to escalate into a lethal one.
Peh. I've been a victim of violent crime five times.
I was punched in the chest on my way to school age 11. I was chased by a gang of kids and punched several times in the back aged 16. I was pelted by eggs while crossing a park twice aged 22 and 23, and was fairly badly mugged aged 25.
Not one of those would have worked out better had I been armed. The first time I was surprised, and the best that would have happened would have been that some guy got shot in the back walking away. Satisfying, but unhelpful. The second might have been stopped if I'd brandished, but then again I might have dropped the gun getting it out and been shot, or overpowered before I fired. I was shit scared and vastly outnumbered. The third and fourth I was both surprised and outnumbered. And anyway, who the fuck pulls a gun in retaliation for an egging? The final and most serious time, I was attacked without warning from the back, and was knocked down to the floor trying to protect my head against my assailants' kicks long before I could have thought to draw a firearm.
Shittons of violent crime is like this: it mostly neither justifies nor provides opportunity for gun use.
Of course, I live in England, so at no point did I have to fear being shot. But I don't think that's in favour of owning firearms just-in-case either, frankly.
Strange take. In 40+ years, I've never needed a gun to defend myself. Nor do I even _know anyone_ that needed to use a gun to lawfully defend themselves.
So why should we all have something that A) the lawful uses of such are exceedingly rare, and B) ends up involved in a lot of unlawful or unintentional killings.
I always wondered this. If someone meant to do you harm with a gun, what are the chances that they would give you the opportunity to defend yourself? The perpetrator would already be prepared and you wouldn’t.
A Glock would not have helped in my case, when five or six young men attacked me at close range (in Oakland), unless I was Chuck Norris and willing to throw away my own life as well as theirs. More police on the streets, and more effective followthrough after the fact, would have helped, though.
I'm glad that situation worked out well. Could you not have done exactly the same even if you'd had a gun though? And that way had he not responded to your excellent de-escalation technique, and had instead attacked you with a bottle, the deterrent of the weapon might have saved you from injury.
I feel the need to again emphasize that in general I am in support of gun control and that I don't personally own guns; I can see how a person might want to though.
I've never had a fire in my home, but I have been attacked in the street. If I had been armed, I expect it would have gone a lot worse for me than it did. I might not be alive to write this post had I had a gun on me then.
Nothing like that has ever happened to me. In fact, I have never been in a situation where I would have been better off with a gun on me. Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often.
The odds of a fire in my kitchen, someone dinging my car, and even a tree falling on my home in a storm are all much higher than the odds of me needing to fire a bullet at another human being. In fact something similar to all three of those things have happened to me already at one point or another. On the other hand I've never needed or even heard of anyone who has needed to use a gun. What's wrong with a baseball bat for self defense? I have one in my closet and never had to draw it, but due to its lower lethality if I had to I would have zero qualms about taking a full swing and I think anyone on the receiving end would realize the same pretty quickly.
I walked away from that with a black eye and stolen phone and laptop, but if a gun had been in play I might not have walked away at all.
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