The justification used by gun advocates for everyone everywhere having a gun (including kindergarten teachers in the classroom), is that it is a deterrent and allows people to defend themselves.

Defend themselves?

I was on active military service in Cyprus many years ago.  My men were cleaning their rifles.  I stood in the doorway of the barrack room. Suddenly a shot was fired. The .303 bullet passed by my forehead, passed through my hair, and lodged in the door jamb, inches away.  One of the soldiers had pulled the trigger with a round up the spout that wasn’t supposed to be there.

What a gun- toter, having watched countless cowboy movies,  would no doubt have  done is to instantly return fire from the hip (in his mind anyway), killing the sloppy, careless shooter.  How did I react?  Notwithstanding being armed with a sub-machine gun at the time, I stood there,  frozen in disbelief, followed by overwhelming fear. It took the battery sergeant major to enter the room, take charge, and put the miscreant under arrest.   All this took place in the space of seconds, but nonetheless I stood there, dazed.  In other words, I reacted as most people would react in real life to something so frightening and so unexpected.  Nothing, in short.

What gun advocates  fail to mention is that the element of surprise renders the shooter pretty safe from retaliation.

Defend yourself my hat!  Shoot from the hip? You don’t understand human reactions.  If in doubt, try it sometime.