"He told me once that the only person who will protect you is yourself."
No one will need to protect themselves once all of the evil guns (handguns, long guns, any and all guns) are gone, right? Everyone will become tame, caring, and docile. At least that's the implicit message in the gun banners' rhetoric. How would a gun banner handle the four-men-with-baseball-bats situation? With more rhetoric?
There is a time and a place for almost everything, and each situation needs to be evaluated in the context in which it occurs. When facing one or multiple attackers intent on doing you harm (or giving every indication of doing so), and leaving you no choice but to defend yourself, you have a duty to protect your person. Luckily, we live in an age when we can protect ourselves with the most efficient and practical means available, a firearm. A few hundred years ago this was not the case, and the average shmuck was at the mercy of brigands.
BTW, it seems that many of the self-defense stories I've read, and this is by no means a
scientific study, involve a fair number of so-called "mouse" guns--.22, .25, etc. Perhaps people who don't fire on a regular basis are more comfortable with these calibers.
DAL
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Reading "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal," by Ayn Rand, should be required of every politician and in every high school.