The only reason that young lady was able to use her pistol to defend herself is because the thug didn’t know she was armed. If the thug had of known she was armed, he would have simply shot her in the back and taken her pistol along with any other valuables she may have had.
If all law abiding Americans were to arm themselves, and criminals knew we were all armed, criminals would simply revert back to “Bush Whacking” like they did in the old West.
Removing criminals from among us can’t be accomplished by only arming our law abiding citizens. Removing criminals from our streets requires more police, larger prisons, and more death sentences.
“The only reason that young lady was able to use her pistol to defend herself is because the thug didn’t know she was armed. If the thug had of known she was armed, he would have simply shot her in the back ....” [DJTaylor, post 13]
And the tactical wisdom that allows you to know everything, and make such insupportable generalizations with such foolhardy arrogance, is distilled from what real-world experiences, exactly?
No one with any real-world experience in the matter would dare write the words you did. Outcomes of tactical situations can never be known in advance; no one knows beforehand just what a perpetrator is going to do. Law enforcement officers, special ops troops, and tactical operators of all types will assert that such cannot be known. Decades of experience have taught them that all one can do is bet the odds, make the best guess and arm (and train) to meet those contingencies.
The “bushwhacker” gambit you posit with such sweeping confidence wasn’t any more or less frequent 150 or two hundred years ago. Criminal perpetrators then and now are basically cowards with outsize egoes and a sense of entitlement to your stuff; if they’ve a hunch you are armed, or even that you might resist, they will pass you up for a target they think they’ve a better chance of intimidating. They never cold-bloodedly calculate the odds and wade into a deadly encounter anyway: courage isn’t their forte. Resistance, even when unarmed, reduces the chances you will be harmed or robbed.
But nothing will bring perfect safety nor 100 percent success. The real world is less than ideal.
They’d also really, really need to hope there were no witnesses, and that the shot was instantly debilitating.
People that do that amongst the armed tend not to survive long without skills, and after a certain amount, it’s harder than robbery.