As usual you miss the point. You would. You would escalate the situation without any concern as to how far it would go fully prepared to use your gun.
No, its not surprising considering you said -

“Because, frankly, I'd hammer the guy in the chops as hard as I could...”

Then -

“Now, here's the thing: if I do, and if it the confrontation escalates to the point where I "need" to draw my gun, I'd damn well better have it with me.”

Oh, and I am not scared of guns (not that I consider that to be necessarily a bad or good thing). It’s just that my level of exposure doesn’t meet your requirements for a brave and masculine gun owner.

Nevertheless it will be you who decides how the situation plays out by your reaction. If someone has initiated such an act unprovoked, it would be a reasonable assumption that when provoked they may at least match it if not escalate it. If one of the parties possesses a mental capacity higher than the other it is he who is able to decide where the confrontation goes.

Why would I deserve such consequences?

Defend them? From saliva? You seem incapable of discriminating between different levels of threats and perils yet expect us to believe you are responsible enough to make decisions about how to react to given situations. While one may feel the desire to beat another’s head in for spitting on ones child it is on balance an unnecessary reaction that could cause unnecessary further and worse harm.
There is no doubt it would be hard to walk away from that situation but I hope that is what I could do. My ego and pride need no such stroking. And I said nothing about running away every time. But your need to marginalise me as a cowardly weakling to support your bellicose rhetoric requires it I suppose.

The opposite of which is to engender them with the attitude to grow up as irrational over aggressive meat heads.

Well as one is nearly 15 and the other 10 and they don’t yet I guess time is running out for your theory to be proven. In a few years they will be able to make their own decisions about how to react in such situations. I have raised them with the same philosophy you find so repugnant yet they have never said anything to make me think they think of me as a coward (such a typically subjective word). And in reality there are far worse things they could think of me than that. As I said I don’t judge my self on how violently I can react and neither do they. Nor is my ego so important to me. And I often think of myself as being insecure.

I can ignore that easy enough.

I will leave your kids out of this.
You complete reliance on supposition and unerring belief in your own greatness has you arguing in moronic generalities and clichés. My children stick up for themselves in a way that makes me proud and confident as far as anyone can be (well anyone with only one helping of confidence anyway). They also posses a level of reason when called upon that puts my mind at ease. I don’t have to fear that they will get themselves into a situation that is out of control because they thought about everything with their gonads or how bravely others will view them.

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An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.