Ask yourself if the gun you are choosing is one that you are willing to get into a standup gunfight with, against one or two attackers, who are armed. Since they (I will use plural verbiage, but it may be a single person) chose to commit heinous acts upon their fellow man, likely planned beforehand and are carrying substantial firepower.
Odds are in their favor right from the start, as they intended them to be in their favor. They deliberately planned it this way.
Many tend to choose handguns that are really Talismans. In other words, they are relying on hope as a strategy. They "hope" that if they produce their little 7 shot micro pistol (that is comfortable to carry)and point it in the direction of what scares them it will ward off evil and that will be all it takes. This has never made any sense, as there is an expectation that the bad guys are thinking rationally. The fact is that the very vast majority of people commiting violent crimes/shootings, etc, are either under the influence of narcotics and/or suffering from a mental health issue. They are not rational thinkers, so expecting them to behave rationally is simply not something one should bet their life on.
In talking with a lot of people who carry these tiny pocket guns over the years, and getting into their thought process it is pretty much always the same.
They "hope" they don't have to actually engage in exchanging back and forth fire with an adversary or two.
That is their strategy.
Their tiny gun is really a good luck charm.
The reality is that a person is better off choosing a handgun not based on what feels good in their hand, or what fits in their pocket. They are better off choosing a handgun that they can actually perform well with under stress. Ask yourself "what is the smallest handgun I am willing to get into a gunfight with against 1 or 2 armed men?" That is your answer.
Some guns are great to carry in your pocket and you can shoot them well, standing, shooting slowfire. But when it comes to making fast and accurate hits at any sort of distance, that is where the wheels fall off.
Don't rely on the old nonsense of "average" gunfights being 3.5 rounds at 10 feet nonsense. Most of those statistics are heavily skewed anyways, having such things as dog attacks and various shootings that are not relevant thrown in the mix. Plus, you are "hoping" you are not a statistical outlier.
Choose what you can make fast and accurate hits with. Not a talisman that is comfortable to carry.
You will get the fight you get, not the one you want to get.
The odds will likely already be against you right from the beginning, so choose wisely.
Mostly bullshit.
The average person carrying a firearm for self-defense is not in the Cop business. They don't have to pick a fight. They can use the threat of lethal force to leave a bad situation.
I don't understand why you completely fail to grasp that a self-defense handgun is carried to get you out of a bad situation - not make an arrest or "save the day". So it is more important for people to have any gun with them as opposed to having the optimum gun.
Now to your points:
Bad guys may not be super rational, but they damn well all seem to know that getting shot is bad ju-ju. And when they get shot, they find it difficult to continue their nefarious ways.
Any gun is a talisman if you don't know how to run it, and, most importantly, if you're not willing to use it (or it is at home in the safe because it is a pain to carry). This "fast and accurate" mantra is misused all the time by [bleep] who can't open their eyes and see that proficiency has little to with the size of the gun.
Rational people pay attention to statistics. Statistics are reality, "what abouts" are bullshit and mental masturbation.
"The best fight is the one you avoid" - said some smart person somewhere, sometime.
Situational awareness trumps handgun choice everytime, without fail.
I worked in a 500+ bed county jail for a decade. Inmates showed me their bullet scars and told me their stories. The most interesting was that they worried less about staring down the barrel of a Cop's gun than a civilian's. But none of them felt bullet proof.
