People are gonna do what they gotta do to stay safe. Laws sometimes be dammed.
One example; when I was a teen, my friend Dave's dad worked for an insurance collection job. He had to go around and collect the monthly payments in some very bad neighborhoods. One night he got shot by two ghetto punks who robbed him. He gave up the money and they then shot him just our of meanness. He lived but was hospitalized for a week or so.
He went and got a gun like most did in D.C. or any anti gun city like D.C., NYC, Philly, Chicago; he put the word out at a few bars where they knew him, and a week or so later he was told to meet the gun guy behind the bowling alley by the dumpster. He got a nice cold little Astra cub. He went down to a deserted part of river bank in Maryland and practiced with it.
Almost a year to the day later, he was making a collection in the same nighborhood and he swears it was the same two punks. Tell him to give it all up. He tells them sure, here it is just don't shoot me. Then he pulls the .25 Astra and dumps half a mag into the one holding the gun. Mugger goes down, his buddy runs like hell, and Mr. D. walks away down the street where his Nash Rambler was parked. Nobody out on the cold winter street so he drives away nice and slow. Tossed the gun in the river and goes about his life. He quits the insurance company and goes to work for Brink's Armored car. Said as long as people were gonna shoot at him, he wants a job that lets him shoot back.
Nobody ever knocked on his door, and the incident just faded into the past. Mr. D lived to a ripe old age.
