Pippin89 wrote:- Your ordeal is certainly shocking, but you can't think it is the norm for this sort of behaviour. Yes of course there are people out there who just want to harm. As you alluded to, there is absolutely zero opportunity, by the sounds of it, where a weapon of any kind on your person would have helped in that situation.
It HAS become the norm. At that time I lived in a rural market town in an affluent part of Oxfordshire that has gradually been extended.
That incident was forty years ago and it was not unheard of. Now things are much, much, much worse. When I lived in Lewisham SE violent crime of some sort was frequent. The police sirens were a constant backdrop. I didn't care to go out on foot much in the evening. Do it enough times in the area I lived in and sooner or later you'd regret it. All I can really say that has changed since the mid nineties is that at least then the stabbings were not nearly as commonplace. And reading that some scuzzbag had thrown acid into someone's face was still a shocking thing to contemplate. Things are worse now.
In the course of this discussion I've recounted three incidents of violence that happened to myself and people I personally know. As well as an incident involving my ex-wife and an act of home invasion. In typing this I've just remembered a further two nasty incidents but don't want to keep recounting them.
I am not John McClane. I'm just a regular guy living in a 'posh' part of Oxfordshire. Yet I can reel off these incidents. I'm sure others living in more challenging areas can too . Probably more so. So yes, it has become the norm.
Also I didn't allude to there being "absolutely zero opportunity, ..., where a weapon of any kind on your person would have helped in that situation." I simply chose not to go in that direction.
In the run up to the first assault I had ample time to draw a weapon and stop the threat there and then, possibly without having to demonstrate the fact that I was armed.
I live in a country where the correct procedure is to take my lumps and then, if able, to report the matter to the police. So this was not a concern my attacker had to consider.
However, in an armed society, my assailant would not have been sure if his intended target could defend himself or not. That being the case the chances are high that he would not have chanced it.
And even it were not the norm why should ordinary folk be subjected to being a statistic so that when enough of us have suffered you will grudgingly err on the side of the law-abiding? How many people have to be stabbed, shot, kicked to the kerb before you appreciate others (not you, if you so choose) should be permitted to be in a position to defend their person with viable means?
