[Sopater]

Just to be safe, have a long gun to fall back to.

I've always heard that a handgun is used to fight your way to your rifle.

[SampleMan]

I've always heard that a handgun is used to fight your way to your rifle.

That's how I look at it.

[Goldsborough]

I've always heard that a handgun is used to fight your way to your rifle.

That's long been one of the more inane sayings in the shooting world.

In many instances, if one is having to rely upon a handgun for self defense it's because they are somewhere that the "rifle" cannot go or is nearly impossible to deploy.

Say one is at the mall picking up a store shipped delivery and a crazed shooter starts opening up. Is your handgun present to simply fight your way to a "trunk rifle, out in the parking lot, or to fight your way back to the rifle in the gun safe across town?

If we're talking right tool for the right job, the handgun has it's own set of tasks where the long arm cannot hope to perform as well.

And pistols are nowhere near as "rare" in military service as the OP suggests. The issue is not one of why do the ground pounders mostly use rifles, it is a question along these lines: If handguns suck so badly, why are they still found in their hundreds of thousands in the military? The correct answer, as even the OP gets around to recognizing is to have "both."