> "It's amazing how much harder it is to shoot something with a pistol from ten feet than it is from two."
Not to mention how much harder it is to shoot something moving, compared to something that isn't.
I completely forgot to consider that, so thanks for pointing it out. Personally, I would feel much less safe 10 feet away from someone with a gun than 10 feet away from someone with a knife, so I suppose that that and popular culture were biasing my view.
This seems like a good place to mention the Tueller drill. A melee attacker can cover 20 feet in 1.5 seconds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
This being said, the US has a very high murder rate (triple its contemporaries) with the bulk of them done by handgun. It seems that it's not that easy after all to escape...
... and this is part of the problem with the gun debate on both sides - there's so much emotive argument on hypothetical situations, and very little examination of what actually happens in the world out there.
One example is "if mugged, would you rather knife or gun?", but that question doesn't allow for my answer "I'd rather have better social programmes so the chances of being mugged in the first place are lower".
That's not to say that I hope to ever have one pointed at me.