Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
but it does not mean an unarmed victim does not have a good chance of survival anyway.
All I can picture here is a soldier being told that he shouldn't dig a foxhole becuase he might damage the garden, and he'll "have a good chance of survival without it anyway."

Of course, he'll have a better chance with the foxhole, and to hell with the garden!

My eye was caught by the footnote which indicates that in 65% of the incidents where victims of crime defended themselves with a gun, the offender was unarmed or not armed with a gun. That's almost exactly two out of every three times where excessive force was apparently used, and that could - should - turn the "victim" into the criminal.
Defending one's self with a gun does not necessarily mean that they fired the weapon, only that they were able to deter the attacker with it. And that's the whole point, really. Nobody with any sanity really wants to kill another person, even an attacker, unless forced into it. And defending yourself from bodily harm, or mental harm, or even property loss, is the right of every person.
Personally, if I am attacked, for whatever reason, I would rather have a gun handy and find out the criminal is unarmed, than for the opposite to be true. And as denuseri so clearly points out, the emotional and mental damage which can accompany an attack may be far more debilitating than any physical damage which the attacker might have inflicted. I would rather spend the rest of my life knowing that I stopped a criminal from attacking me and my loved ones, and stopped him from attacking countless other victims over the course of his life, than to have to live with the consequences of doing nothing and letting him do what he will.