Armed Aggression Disguised as DGU

Last week over at The Truth About Guns, Robert asked the following question.

Have You Ever Felt You Needed A Gun and Didn’t Have One?

Commenter Josh offered this.

Within 5 minutes of getting off the bus at the station, a drunk and presumably cracked out homeless man came running at me swinging a 2×4. I was sick, tired, and in a place i’d never been. Adrenaline started pumping, and I started thinking about how I was gonna avoid getting hit in the head with this 2×4.

When the guy got about 3ft from me, he just stopped dead in his tracks, laughed, burped, and walked off the otherway.

After reading a dozen similar stories, I responded.

Doesn’t the fact that you lived to talk about it indicate that in fact you didn’t need a gun? Doesn’t the fact that you and Robert and others are looking back on situations you all survived and admit that you wish you’d been armed, say something about your fear and paranoia and insecurity?

I think it does.

These are the worst kind of examples. These should be posted on my site as proof that you are paranoid. The ones you need here are the guys who were shot or killed when they were not carrying. Those would make your point for you. But what you’ve got here is quite the opposite.

In reflecting back on this exchange, I've taken it one step further. We all agreed that the ones who truly did have a need for a gun are dead and can't tell their tale. I guess that was some kind of reluctant acquiescence on their part although not one of the commenters or moderators said I was right or that I had a point.

The next logical question is,

What would have happened if you'd been armed?

Since we now know that every one of the past scary situations described was one in which no gun was needed for survival, we can conclude that ANY use of the gun would have been unnecessary and therefore criminal. That would be from simple brandishing to killing someone.

One more logical step: EVERY one of those cases in which the gun came out unnecessarily, would have been called a legitimate Defensive Gun Use. What else is a gun owner to do? It's not his fault when someone gets too close to him or scares him in some way. In describing it to the police afterwards, naturally he'd feel justified since he'd felt his life was in jeapardy.

Robert Farago calls his readers and commenters "The Armed Intelligentsia."  I feel there's good reason for that.  As a group they are intelligent and knowledgeable, they continually reinforce the importance of training and gun safety.  I've described them as "fanatical," which, I don't know if they realized it, was a compliment.

If among such superior examples of gun ownership, and I mean that sincerely, we have such a bleak picture of the uselessness of carrying a gun, imagine how much worse it is among the general gun-owning public.

Guns are bad news and concealed carry makes it worse.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.