I’m also not sure how ‘pistols have very poor accuracy’ means it’s not an offensive weapon, but rather a defensive weapon.
I mean, if you’re an offender, and you fire a weapon with poor accuracy, and it misses… you’re still going to be acting offensively. You might damage property instead of the person you’re aiming at, or you might damage somebody else, or you might not hurt anybody and scare the bejeesus out of the target, but either way, as somebody on the offensive, you’re still causing damage and mayhem and probably don’t care about what got damaged. You might lose if your only goal is killing the person and you failed, but… as an offender, there’s at least a chance you’re the only one in the area who’s got their gun out, and so you can get closer and take another shot.
Now, let’s say you’re a defender. Who are you defending against? Probably not overwhelming force (if so, you’re screwed anyway, most likely), but probably against one guy or a small group of armed offenders. And so, chances are, if you aim at somebody threatening you with a weapon (or threatening everybody, in a hostage situation) and miss, your bullet hurts… your property, or somebody else you care about who’s in the area, or an innocent bystander, either way… your defending didn’t just FAIL, it did more damage, except in the slight case if it scares the person into leaving with no further damage. If that DIDN’T happen, you’ve just attacked somebody who’s got a weapon and willing to use it, and missed, so they’re still armed, so not only did you harm something other than your target that you probably don’t want harmed, but you also made yourself a target.
Seems to me the handgun’s more effective as an offensive weapon than a defensive one.
