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In all seriousness, if you are buying a gun for self defense, it is best to go for a two-fer, and get a knife as well.

A problem with guns is that they can have a “minimum range” as well as a maximum range. This is called the “Tueller Drill”, and is regularly taught to police officers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

In brief, if a *trained* and *prepared* person with a holstered gun is standing opposite an attacker with a knife, the person with the knife will be able to close and cut them from a minimum distance of 21 feet, *before* the person can unholster and fire their gun twice at the knife wielder’s center of mass.

This also applies to an unarmed attacker. A lot of the drunks police meet up with want to wrestle.

This means that the “minimum effective range” of a trained and prepared person is 21 feet. Now imagine how far that distance is, if you are *not* prepared or expecting a problem. 25 feet? 30 feet? This is why you should think of a gun as a “medium range weapon”.

Now women in particular have long faced the “bear hug problem” in self defense, namely that a large man will run up to them and give them a bear hug, and there is very little they can do to defend themselves at this point.

This was so problematic that Buddhist nuns in China actually invented a “zero distance” martial arts style just for that purpose.

But the time it takes to unsheath a knife and put it between you and an attacker is just a fraction of the time it takes for a gun. And, stab or slash, you *will* convey the message of “back off, Jack!”

Knives do not have safeties, nor do they need reloading, and the injuries inflicted by a knife slash are often worse than a bullet hole. Mortality from knife cuts is high.

Thus, while guns are good, it does not hurt at all to have a complementary knife back up.