This is one of those things that illustrates so well the difference between the needs and tasks of military personnel and the armed citizen self-defender.
If you're a soldier or Marine engaged in fighting an armed conflict, you are guided by rules of engagement that allow, in fact require, you to participate in extended, long(er)-range hostilities. You're going to NEED a rifle to accomplish you job/duty (unless you're tasked with using even more powerful stuff ... like radios). If you're caught in a position where all you have on you is your handgun (and you even HAD a handgun) then you're fighting your way back to a rifle so you can continue to carry the fight to the enemy until that force is vanquished.
None of that has any direct analogy to civilian self-defense. There are hints of it here and there -- mostly in the "civil unrest" fantasies of some of the more ...enthusiastic... gun guys, where they're caught out in the yard by the lead element of the approaching mob and have to fight back into the house to grab a rifle and take up defensive positions at the bedroom window and pick off the main body of the attacking gang-banger posse ... or whatever.
But citizen self-defense is almost universally defined as fast, VERY short-range engagements between some good citizen just out "minding their own business" and one, two, or maybe a handful of attackers. Attackers who are out for quick monetary gain, usually, or at worst are looking for a soft victim for some process-predator assault. In these cases, the idea of a sustained fight in which you're offering a running active defense as you maneuver back to a strong-point and access more powerful weapons with which to drive off the assailants, just has no relevance.
We had a really interesting thread about this a year or two ago. One poster held firmly that he kept a rifle (SKS, I think) in his car, with the intent that, if he was attacked while out at the store or mall, he would use his handgun to fight his way back to the rifle stashed in his car.
My counter point was, "and then what?" Because if you have fought your way clear (or simply evaded) an active shooter situation, and you've made you way out into the parking lot to your car where you can get to your rifle. ... LEAVE! You've already successfully dealt with the self-defense issue.
We went 'round about it a few cycles with various "what ifs" thrown in. (What if my family is still in the mall and I've got to go back and find them? What if the shooter pursues me out into the parking lot? Etc.) But they all approached vanishingly small probability, and/or presented other more suitable solutions.
Self-defense encounters generally follow something pretty close to the "3 shots, 3 yards, 3 seconds" rule -- and your duty is to survive, escape, and evade. If you can't do that with your handgun, that rifle you're "fighting your way back to" doesn't even enter the picture.
So the idea of "...fight your way back..." is pretty much just a gung-ho soundbite that doesn't mean anything in a non-military context.
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