Not by any real definition of the word, no. Others have explained it sufficiently.
Not unless while they rob you they yell “In the name of the Profit!”
Perhaps you’d like to educate the rest of the class, then? How would being armed preserve your own life? I can see plenty of ways it might shorten the attacker’s life, and several ways it might shorten your own, but neither of those is the goal.
Surely you are not referring to people who carry openly, but only concealed right? Open carrying makes you easily identifiable as a more dangerous target to criminals, some of which might have killed you otherwise.
The cases in which carrying concealed could save your life involve struggling with someone determined to kill you. I know of at least one anecdote from a member of this message board who’s life was saved by killing an intruder with his shotgun. He was not carrying concealed at the time, but extrapolating that into a hypothetical scenario involving a concealed weapon is not difficult.
Okay, I’m a gun nut. I think full-auto battle rifles should be legal, and ditto with unrestricted national concealed-carry. I say that so you aren’t tempted to throw off a glib snarky answer when I say that I cannot see how being armed increases your chances of survival in a real-world mugging situation except in the aggregate, which we are expressly not talking about.
So come back and explain it to me. How does having a concealed weapon enable me to draw, aim, and fire faster than a criminal who is within a few feet of me can stab my balls off or shoot me first.
ETA:
We’re not talking about that. We’re expressly and only talking about the (far, far more common) situation in which you are currently being mugged, with all the typical attendants–surprise on the part of the mugger, a demand for your cash, and likely a weapon in evidence in the criminal’s possession.
About 15 or so years ago, I strongly considered getting a gun. Not for the mugging scenarios being discussed here - I wasn’t going to be walking about town with a gun anyway. I was thinking of the situation when it’s late at night and you hear some strange noises from some other part of the house, and you go there to investigate. You feel a lot safer going there to investigate with a gun in hand than you would without one.
It’s not foolproof either, because if it is a robber and he has a gun and hears you coming, he would possibly whip out his own gun while waiting for you (if he chooses to wait) and as soon as he sees your gun in hand, there’s a good chance he would shoot. That said, my guess is that the odds are tilted in your favor in that situation. (Although you also need to be sure that you don’t mistake some family member or visitor for a robber and start shooting.)
But at the time, I spoke to a guy I knew who was from Texas and was familiar with guns. His basic point was that unless you practiced shooting a lot, you would have very little chance of hitting anything at the distance you’d be likely to encounter someone. Apparently it looks a lot easier than it is.
And that killed it for me. I wasn’t interested enough to spend the time and money in practicing shooting, and when you add that to the need to keep the gun in a place that would be readily accessible to you when you suddenly needed it, but yet not accessible to the kids, plus the need to keep the gun cleaned or oiled or whatever, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.
Fortunately I’m still alive, despite any number of strange noises since then. 
BTW, I do know that they advise kids (& presumably adults as well) that if someone comes up to them in the street and shows them a gun and says to get into their vehicle, to not comply, but rather to run for it. The thinking is that there’s a good chance the guy won’t shoot (especially in a public place) and even if he does, there’s a good chance he’ll miss or hit in some non-life threatening area. Whereas if you get into the guy’s car your chances are a lot worse.
Muggers, by definition, probably just want your money or your stuff. Their goal isn’t to kill you. By drawing your weapon, however, you probably increase your own chances of being killed or injured.
There are plenty of cases where a firearm might save your life, sure. Mugging isn’t really one of those situations though. I have yet to see a single person suggest a realistic scenario where having a firearm would increase your chances of surviving a mugging. In general, your chances of surviving are pretty high to start off with, and I can’t see how a firearm would do anything but reduce your survival chances.
I think there’s a lot of assumptions in this thread about the motivations of the criminal, but it’s all about the motivations of the criminal that determines whether or not using a gun will make a difference. Sure, it’s safer not to pull a gun IF you’re sure that your attacker is acting rationally, but that isn’t guaranteed. But at the same time, a rational attacker, when faced with potential injury or death, wouldn’t proceed with the attack or would retreat at the first sign of a threat. But if your attacker isn’t acting rationally, one has no reason to believe that it’s “just a business transaction” and one has to attempt to determine his intentions.
To that end, I think if one were randomly mugged while out at night, it’s probably safest to just comply. His motivations are clear, avenues of escape are available, and it’s a very quick interaction. However, if someone enter’s your home, he may be there to burglarize or he may be there for some other reason, and avenues of escape of greatly reduced, and it involves more effort to initiate and sustain the intereaction. In the latter case, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to shoot an invader in my home.
As for actual statistics for a factual answer, I’m not sure what you’ll find. As mentioned upthread, there are several pro-gun rights groups that track gun usage to protect victims and I imagine there’s anti-gun groups that track gun crimes and such, so I’m unsure if you’ll be able to find any meaningful unbiased cites.
I still haven’t got a satisfactory answer to this typical scenario of home-invasion by criminals that pro-gun-advocates always keep bringing up: why in the heck is the natural impluse against fear of criminals breaking in to get a gun instead of getting an alarm system?
Do you sleep so lightly that you will wake up when somebody enters? Are the criminals all so incompetent that they break in with a lot of noise instead of just cracking the lock or silently breaking a window?
Have you never heard that houses “settle” and make noises all by themselves?
Why would you want to investigate noises outside the bedroom if you think criminals are around, instead of defending your bedroom? By moving away from one room, you open the possibility of being attacked from behind, when all the guns in the world won’t help you.
Why would criminals break into a house with people sleeping inside vs. breaking in when people are absent on work or vacation?
Is this scenario really common, or just used a lot? The other side to this that the pro-gun-control people bring out is that most of the people shot sneaking around the house at night are teenagers coming home after curfew and therefore sneaking.
It’s worse than that, since he doesn’t even have to shoot or stab you first. He can still do that after you shoot him, too. Guns are good for killing, but they’re not good for killing instantly, or even incapacitating instantly. Even if you get off a good center-of-cross-section shot on your assailant, he’s still got several seconds or minutes in which to continue to fight. He’ll probably bleed to death shortly thereafter, but him bleeding to death in a few minutes isn’t going to do anything to help you.
I’ve gone over many scenarios of robbery in my head and there are many different responses. Each situation is different and requires a different response.
First of all, while I always carry the same pistol I don’t always carry it in the same manner. What I am doing and, more importantly, what I am wearing dictate how I carry. In a perfect life I would carry in the same manner at all times. That’s not possible. But I would rather be carrying in a manner less tactical than others than to not be carrying at all.
Walking my dog: Open carry on my hip.
Hot summer day wearing just shorts and a tee shirt: front pocket carry in a pocket holster.
Wearing long pants and a shirt, but no over shirt or jacket: Ankel holster.
Blue jeans and a shirt but no jacket: I have a pouch that looks like a camera bag that goes on a pants belt. I sewed a patch from a popular camera maker on it to make it seem more like a camera bag.
Suit w/jacket: Carry on hip concealing with the jacket, or in the inside side pocket of the suit coat using Clip Draw
Winter coat: carry inside the pocket of the coat. Sometimes freely, sometimes in a pocket holster.
Some of these are more tactical than others. Getting a pistol out of an ankle holster with a gun pointed at me while I was standing would not work out well. Getting it out while sitting (such as during an attempted car-jacking) works very well and I’ve practiced it.
A robber turns around at the gas station he’s robbing, points his gun at me and says “give me your money too” is going to get it. If he has a knife I’m going to retreat and draw if possible. If I can’t, he’s going to get the money. If I’m wearing a winter coat I’m going to shoot through the pocket. If it seems like the robber is going to hurt me whether he get’s the money or not, I’m going to take whatever measure I can to fight back. Every scenario has a different response. It’s impossible to address them all here.
A person pointing a weapon at you has exhibited the 3 required justifications for using lethal force: Weapon, intent, delivery system. Having a someone point a weapon at you without your consent is enough to articulate that you feared for your life. You do not need the robber to verbalize they intend to harm you to use force against them. If they didn’t intend to harm you they shouldn’t be pointing a gun/knife at you. It’s insincere.
Many people do get alarm systems. Alarm systems have their own issues, including cost, false alarms, and that they can apparently be defeated by criminals.
It’s common for people to wake up in such circumstances.
Because you have kids and/or stuff in other rooms.
You’ve got to ask criminals that. I can think of a lot of reasons, but it’s irrelevant for this discussion, because the fact is that they do all the time, which is enough for our purposes.
No doubt, but by that point, it’s too late for you pulling a gun to do any good. Do you really think you can draw, aim, and hit his heart or central nervous system before he can fire his already drawn and aimed gun and hit you anywhere on your head or torso?
I hope the OP didn’t need his answer on the spot.
Well you notice he hasn’t returned to this thread. dum dudumdum …
I remember reading about why soldiers and policemen are taught to always aim for the center of body mass when shooting at a target - despite the fact that shooting someone in the leg might produce a result they’d prefer, especially for police - which was that “miss” rates are surprisingly high even amongst professional policemen and soldiers who’ve had training and spent years on the shooting range. Telling them to aim for legs or arms would make them miss even more often. God knows what the hit rates would be for amateur shooters who might not have even had training or all that much practice. It’s just a very difficult skill to hit a moving target in a high-adrenaline situation.
In Massachusetts, should you wound or kill a robber, you will be sued by his family-and probably made to pay an enormous fine (plus your legal bills).
And if your weapon is unregistered, you will face heavy penalties.
So do the safe thing-allow yorself to be robbed, and pray that the perp won’t kill you!
As this is the GQ forum, ralph…cite? Even an example of where this has actually happened once in Massachusetts would be good.
OK, a few things:
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The original story in that thread is in Wisconsin, not Massachusetts. And, in that story, the bad guy is, indeed filing suit, but frivolous or spurious lawsuits get filed all the time. Whether or not he’ll actually win is another story.
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So, I’m guessing you’re referring to the reply in post #34, on page 2 of that thread:
“In my MA CCW class the instructor who is a police detective retired strongly advised us all to not shoot anyone in the back on the street or at home while in the state of MA. He repeated this multiple times as it being a recipe for a nearly guaranteed lose in criminal and/or civil court.”
Even if you set aside that this is second-hand information (i.e., “a police detective told me this…”), there are three important words in there: “in the back”. If a mugger is threatening you, and you shoot at him, you are not shooting him “in the back”, you are shooting him “in the front”. This has nothing to do with a guy being able to sue you for shooting him while he is trying to mug you – it has everything to do with a guy being able to sue you for shooting him while he is running away from you.
I’d still like to see an actual cite of a case in which a mugger was shot by the muggee, and successfully sued.