>>498145So when the No True Scottsman fallacy fails, it's time to trot out a strawman, huh? I notice that in this whole thread, nobody has successfully argued (or even attempted to, without fallacious reasoning) why there is no need to ever have a gun with them in the wilderness, and I strongly suspect this is because such a position is, in fact, indefensible.
The reality is that a gun provides real protection against a variety of dangerous situations with animals, both quadrupeds and bipeds, at a very small cost of weight (roughly 2 pounds, or the same weight as a liter of water). Being in the wilderness doesn't necessarily mean that these situations will be more frequent, but what it does mean is that you are that much farther from institutional help, which so many of us take for granted.
What that means is that if you get attacked by an animal and sustain severe lacerations, then there is no hospital nearby. You can perform first aid to a limited extent, but had you simply killed the animal in the first place, then you could have avoided being in critical medical condition altogether. Likewise, if some nutcase decides he wants to rape some woman hiker who is camping alone, there's no police to come and save her. Her life, without a gun, is in the hands of the nutcase, who is stronger than she is and is motivated to ensure that she won't be able to talk afterwards.
As outdoorsmen, we pride ourselves on being self-sufficient in all things. It is contrarian to forget that this extends to protecting our own life not just from the cold, heat, rain and our own planning, but from these other kinds of threats as well, which, again, a gun can do very effectively, at a small cost of weight.
So when you compare having a gun to defend against dangerous animals to carrying a lightning rod (which I shouldn't even need to point out, wouldn't even work unless it was connected to a deeply buried underground grid), it is hard for me to take you seriously.
