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That's why survivors especially become so viscerally angry at the suggestion that we'd like to see more women armed. If being armed would prevent other crimes similar to the ones the survivors went through, then maybe their own criminal encounter was preventable too. That's an unacceptable, unbearable thought, because it means that they themselves did not have to be as powerless, as helpless to control the flow of events, as they perceived themselves to be -- which in turn leads to the unacceptable but almost inescapable feeling of, "If I could have been in control, but wasn't, I was in part to blame for what happened." That's utterly unacceptable, so the entire train of thought gets viscerally rejected at the outset -- often with white-hot anger.
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This kind of touches (in a roundabout way) on what Glenn said about people seeing fighting back as 'evil responding to evil'. We've become SO entrenched in the 'conflict avoidance at all cost' mentality that we shy away from saying the hard things that need to be said.
I can really see where there's a point where you make suggestions to a crime victim, who then becomes shrill and the person trying to help backs down rather than press forward with the unpleasant reality in the face of conflict. We've resorted to 'interventions' because as a society we've gotten to the point where we need superior numbers just to muster up enough courage to say 'dude, you're screwed up' to someone.
Until we're willing to say hard things to people willing to have the courage to listen to hard statements about their abilities and mindset, nothing is going to change. GIGO.