Sebastian offers us
this story of a home defense incident involving a sword. (It turns out well for
the sword wielder).
Picture yourself in this position, though; especially if you are not a large
and fit man. A large man, dripping blood, has just entered your bedroom and is
demanding that you keep quiet and don't let the police know he's there. He is
evidently not in his right mind. What are your options? What can you do, what
will you do?
Locking the doors didn't help this couple - the intruder got through. Per
the news article on the incident, the guy fought it out with a police dog,
so he's not a peace-minded individual. Like the vast majority of defensive
weapon uses, the mere display of a weapon and the will to use it was enough to
stop an incident in its tracks.
But a sword is not a very good home defense weapon - it takes a lot of
training to use, requires a certain amount of space to wield, and a good one is
hard to get a hold of and expensive to boot. Martial arts have a similar issue.
Both also require that the wielder be close to the opponent in physical
capability - a 5'0" woman is going to find it difficult to hold off a larger,
stronger (especially in upper body strength) male unless she is extensively (and
expensively) trained and keeps up her training. But a firearm is cheap (and
could be cheaper without sometimes stifling government regulation), easy to
learn to use, and gain and keep the basic proficiency needed for self-defense
purposes, and doesn't care about your level of physical ability beyond a low
minimum - there was a recent news story about an elderly woman who had to use a
walker nevertheless defending herself against an intruder and holding him until
the police arrived to take the intruder into custody.
Defense of self and personal property is a human right, and the best way to
defend yourself, hands-down, is with a firearm.
Oleg Volk has a series
of posters on the subject of self defense (among other things) - check them
out.
I want to end this post with this thought - "God made man, Samuel Colt made
man equal."
"