If it is against the law to posess firearms, then anyone in a position of strength, say a 300 pound burly guy with muscles on his teeth, ready for some trouble, comes across a 120 pound woman in the parking lot. If he knows for a fact she unarmed and he wants something from her, nothing is stopping him from attacking.

If she might be concealing a deringer underneath her coat, he might reconsider and go on home.

It is a question of who is in a superior position in life:

A woman whose been raped and murdered?

Or a woman holding a smoking gun over the body of the would-be rapist?