This is an interesting thread. Gun ownership is a complicated issue. On one hand everybody wants to be able to defend themselves, particularly when the local police are reluctant to take up the mantle. On the other hand, nobody wants to find themselves in an altercation with someone who decides to use that same means as an offense, rather than defense.

To make things worse, we talk about "gun control" as if a gun is somehow disjoint from the spectrum of weapons and aggression. What about tasers, batons, brass knuckles, pepper spray, steeled toed boots, baseball bats with nails through the end? What about regular baseball bats, U-locks, and scary looking pieces of pipe? Personal aggression is not limited to explosive-propelled projectile weapons.

Then we throw in numbers and the argument goes to the birds. Criminals are less likely to invade a home in an area that has proportionally higher gun ownership. Gun deaths are fewer in areas with strict gun control laws. A gun makes a weak victim as powerful as a strong attacker. A gun makes a weak attacker as powerful as a strong victim.

The question at hand, however, is would the OP have been more or less likely to face real danger were gun ownership prevalent in Australia? Personally, I don't see how having a gun would help me as I travel on a bike towards a group of prepared, collected, on-foot thugs. Am I supposed to take shots across the handlebars at 20 MPH? Simply wave it around? Does that give them the right to defend themselves against my perceived threat with their own guns? Would my family prefer that I simply turned around and took a different route that day, or that myself and up to four thugs died in a firefight?

Obviously there's no magic bullet (har har). My personal view: in the vast majority of near-violent situations, escalation of aggression does not help avoid violence. Guns, regardless of their secondary effects, are a means of aggression, and so I prefer not to own one, independent of legality.