Yes, it certainly is "a relic of the 18th century." It's confusing and obsolete. It's actually embarrassing.
Ok Lakota, hopefully this don't happen, but say you have a sister, and she is being abused by her husband who is POcrap. You tell her over and over again that you wished she would leave him, but she tells you it will be OK. She begs you to not say anything, and you don't. The guy is bigger, stronger, and meaner than you ever could imagine in life.
You notify the law secretly, but they tell you over and over again that she will have to notify them, and they can't intervene.
Then one night you hear a bad ruckus next door, and it's your mean brother & law beating your sister, and your nephew tries to intervene, but he turns on him next, you call 9-11 but know that if you don't distract the brother & law quickly one of your family members might die. So you take a shovel and try to scare him with it to buy some time, but he takes the shovel from you, and then kills you with it, and then in his rage he kills your sister next, and then the cops arrive with his shovel in the air again (shoot him dead), saving your nephew.
Or you could have called 9-11, took your gun, and confronted him with it, causing him to shut down because he was a coward who was used to bullying people, but was scared to death to lose his own life when push came to shove, and you all then waited for the law to arrive as your family members were saved that day by a good man with an equalizer in this case a gun.