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Spin Zone / Re: Toy guns vs replicas vs real firearms
« on: September 26, 2016, 01:46:01 PM »That's actually a very good point with which I agree, if the costs in time and money were comparable, and I were poor enough that I couldn't have both.
Then I would need to weigh the stakes as well as the odds. Lets say the odds of me dying from a heart attack are very high, lets even say they are 100%, I'll give you that. If I don't spend money on gym membership and instead become a "gun enthusiast", then the odds are 100% I will die of a heart attack anywhere between age 45 and 90. Let's say I am a young woman and the odds of me being murdered are very low, but if it does happen, I get to suffer prolonged torture and rape before I die.
Please do remember that we're talking orders of magnitude here. The odds on your dying young of heart disease range from even money to double digits depending on the shape in which you keep yourself. Spending the firearm money on a gym membership that you use will statistically extend your life by a fair margin.
Let's see, what to do? Just how small would the odds need to be before I'd chance the torture session and losing from 25 to 70 years of my life? Okay you make a fair point, I'll grant you that there is some number low enough. But I am also going to have to include the odds of me being in a natural disaster where the thugs from the inner city swarm out like cockroaches and loot my neighborhood.
In a natural disaster whoever wants it can have my shit. My crap is worth neither dying nor killing for. I don't care, the emphasis is getting means mine out of the disaster zone as quickly as possible. Thankfully where I live the wx is unpleasant but not deadly, and I am in a zone that is seismically stable.
Then you have to add the odds of being in a convenience store when it's robbed, or a bank, or in a mall when the next jihadist goes whacko. And the odds that the neighbor's pack of pit bulls will get loose. And so on.
Than you have to add the odds that you can't shoot straight in an emergency. Don't believe me? Try this:
The odds of any one of these things hurting or killing me is very small, but the cumulative odds of something happening which would make me wish I had a gun, is not so small. Maybe still small, but not infinitesimal, and the stakes of the worst of them are SO very high, that I think on balance I need to take my heart attack. But I don't need to make that choice. I can afford my gun AND get good healthcare, so it's a no brainer. In this case, why wouldn't I want to be ready to defend myself?
Like I said, I once had reliable numbers saying your odds of suffering a firearm tragedy are higher than your odds of a home invasion of the sort that will harm you (keep in mind most "home invasions" are burgers looking for a quick and uncomplicated score). I don't have the numbers anymore, but my guess is if you don't live in a war zone and don't do or sell drugs, the odds on your home being invaded by someone who wants to harm you are laughably small and simply don't justify the investment and upkeep of a firearm. Moreover, any home that has small children and firearms laying about loaded (a prerequisite for home defense) is just asking for tragedy.