In comments over at Irons in the Fire, BobG from Near the Salty City sums it up quite well:
at 54, with a stent, 4 bads disks, and some extra poundage on me, I don't like the idea of trying to scrap with a couple of 19 year-olds on meth.
And that, friends, is what it's all about. Some folks have the physical strength, experience with martial arts and all that good stuff...but then some of us are at a disadvantage in that department, one that for all the effort we could give it can arguably never be completely overcome. Me, I'm a gimp. I have a bad arm and a bad leg, been that way ever since I was born. I walk, but with a limp, and the arm isn't as strong as the good arm. Give me a can of mace or pepperspray or a knife against, say, a couple of 23-year-old ex-high-school football players high on crystal meth, and I might get in a good jab or two, but it might well be the last thing I ever did. But with a .45 in my hand, well, the playing field is leveled considerably, and I have a hell of a lot more to work with than if I were staking my making it through the scrape by just my physical ability alone. Some things just cannot be planned for, and that's what a gun is there for -- a tool for when the situation at hand is beyond the limits of all the other tools in the box. Would that the world's gun bigots could see it as such instead of some evil talisman whose possession makes people prone to kill, or, as I recently heard one person put it, use his or her fellow citizens for target practice. I don't think I'll ever understand that point of view.
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