"Doug Miller" wrote in message
t...
In article , "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for
protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly
dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion
here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US.

Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really believe
that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in "the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??

The combined population of those three towns is 49,158. That's 1.63 * 10^-4
of the US population and the shootings you're talking about are spread out
over a period of just over 10 years at three distant locations. I think that
falls deeply into the "most extreme and remote possibilities" category.

If, to be generous, 100 people at each location actually saw what was going
on, and assuming even more generously that each one of them could have done
something about it, that's 1/1,000,000 of the US population who, if they
were armed, in position to shoot, and actually *did* shoot, might have
intervened on one occassion in ten years. Whether they would have been
successful is another question entirely.

If you're armed for the purpose of intervening in such events that means
your chance of encountering one is roughly one in ten million per year. That
falls into the category of "statistically it makes little sense."

The legitimate reason to be armed is for your own defense. If your idea is
that you're going to protect other people from murderous madmen, you're in
cloud-cuckooland.

It isn't a question of whether you pay attention to the news, Doug. It's a
matter of having a realistic measure of the probabilities.


What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalac...f_Law_shooting

Yes, we know about that shooting, which was stopped by off-duty cops, not
ordinary students. John Lott himself was here on RCM to tell us all about
it:

http://timlambert.org/2003/01/roshhuntress/

--
Ed Huntress