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How strange, you carry a gun around everywhere? That seems a bit much for me. Plus that could turn against you. Sorry to hear about your best friend...I can't imagine the horror of it.
Luckily, though there are many problems in my country, there aren't nearly as many crimes from strangers attacking women as I guess people in the States have.
I have always been very cautious when walking anywhere alone though - this was drummed in to me by my mom from a young age. I know a lot of girls who aren't half as cautious as me.
I'd like to take a self-defence class to feel safer...even if you're aware, if someone wants to grab you or whatever, they will. Especially if you're weaker and have no training in how to defend yourself. I have been in one situation where this was true.
In the subway here there are plenty of pickpockets. They aren't very extreme (I've heard of places where they will cut your bag open to get what they want) but they are clever. I always hold my bag in a way that it makes it hard to grab and always check if someone is behind me and never walk too slowly.
Even so, last year I was going home after work, and was pretty tired. So for once I paused on the escalator. It only took a split second. I felt a small tug on my bag and looked back. There was a guy with his arm under a shirt (wrapped over his hand) and obviously he had been touching my bag. Also, he was on the step exactly behind me - way too close. Immediately I turned around and yelled at the guy "what the fuck do you think you're doing?" and grabbed the shirt over his hand and threw it at him. I was pretty sure he was trying something as this sort of thing had been tried on me before.
What happened next was that the guy got all indignant on me, saying he wasn't doing anything, and then proceeded to hit me over the head and spit in my face. Yes. That is probably one of the worst things that6 has happened to me ever. I then started screaming and asking for help, but the best thing was that no one helped, just stood around and stared, including the station security guard who eventually prised the man off me and kept him away. The guy continued to shout abuse at me but of course as soon as the police showed up he ran away.
Another horrible story that happened to a woman I know was that one night she was leaving a cinema and walking home when some guy came behind her and tried to run with her bag. Sadly for her she had her fingers wrapped round the strap and they got caught. She was also silly and decided not to let him take it without a fight. He pulled so hard that eventually he broke both her wrists and also severed two of her fingers clean off because they were wrapped in the strap. She still has her fingers as they were able to save those, but she now has reduced use of that hand. This was about 500 m from where I work. I leave work every day at 8pm and it's already dark in winter. Makes me feel...pretty scared really.
The thing is, you can't always be 100% safe, sometimes your phone battery runs out, or you forget it at home, or you're distracted for a second, all it takes is one insignificant decision and it happens. Even in their own homes, women have been attacked by strangers in the night or even day time (I know one girl who had her house robbed in the day time while she was there), so what can you do really? I just can't understand the people who want to cause harm to others this way. What a fucked up world we live in.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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