Hmm, even point and shoot from the hip has better odds than that. What you're saying is that you have as much chance of shooting yourself as shooting the attacker; you make no sense.
Actually, it makes perfect sense.
Law enforcement staff are trained that you require at minimum 21 feet of distance between yourself and an attacker, when prepared, to draw and fire a weapon in order to stop them. That's when you're prepared for it. To fire a weapon before an attacker can rush you when it has been drawn and aimed requires a minimum of 8 feet. That's when you have the gun (or whatever) aimed at the guy's chest. Any closer than that and he could stab you, knock your hand, etc. If your weapon is in your hand but not aimed, you need about 12-15 feet, minimum.
How many houses have you been in where you would have anywhere near that much room between you and an attacker? Furthermore, the attacker is prepared for the situation. They are willing to use violence toward their own goals. Is everyone who owns a gun for "self-defense" going to be willing to kill another human over a TV set? Or may they hesitate?
You can still point the weapon in the general direction of the enemy and press the trigger, the chances are completely different than "split the room into many random 9mm squares and randomize". It does not work like that! Pointing a gun into the general direction of your enemy is almost instinctive - you can easily hit or hurt an enemy at under 10m distances without using sights at all. It might not kill them, but it will propably stall or incapacitate them.
I have trained close quarters combat with automatic and semiautomatic weapons, grenades and explosive ****. It's extremely difficult and I wouldn't want to face someone who knows what to do under those circumastances, unless I had some comrades protecting me. And grenades and stuff. Provable presence of a ballistic weapon has, in itself, a huge deterrance value.
In a home invasion or any sort of attack in confined spaces, unless you are trained and completely prepared, you have a much better chance of being maimed or killed by an attacker, even with your own weapon, than you have of stopping them. How's that for sobering reality? The odds are always in the favour of the aggressor.
But a weapon does not work like that. Even if you coldly calculate the distances, while taking note about general ballistics and hit percentages of said type of weapon under stress, the presence of a gun itself is a suppressive force.
Of course, if you don't know how to handle a gun and face someone who knows just how to counter a gun in close encounter, you're already ****ed - or, if you face someone who knows what to do, you're probably ****ed no matter what you do.
According to my training and the army guidebooks I waded through, when adversaries with similar training, similar weaponry and similar numbers meet in a built-up area, the defender has a slight advantage over the aggressor. In one-on-one situations the odds favour the defender.
I've worked in both security and federal law enforcement; I've been in some ugly situations. I know the technical details and the statistics. Anyone who tells you its a simple matter of firing a warning shot, shooting someone in the leg, or getting into a gunfight in the living room doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. If you want to be serious about self-defense and defense of your home, then you'd better get some training on the subject, not justshove a gun (especially an unloaded "detterent gun", that's even more idiotic) in your bedside table.
Shooting someone in the leg is much more difficult than shooting a shot that is intended as lethal or noncapacitating. I
A gun is a tool - it's useless unless you know how to use it. In close combat guns, even assault rifles, loose to something more... instinctive, like a knife, unless you know how to deal with them and how to use your weapons (not very difficult). However, ranged weapons give you much more time to deal with your enemy than a melee weapon, but that requires training. Owning a gun does not constitute as training. If you have a gun, you can simply point it and press the trigger, even when injured.
