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

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
. net...
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.

My point exactly: you *don't* have to be in the most dangerous parts of
the
most dangerous cities for stuff like that to happen.

Well, what are you arguing with? I said that it makes no sense
statistically. And then I showed you the numbers on your examples. If you're
living your life on one-in-a-million probabilities, Doug, you should be
investing heavily in the lottery.

According to the NSC, your chances of being killed in a firearm assault are
1:324. Your chances of dying from accidental poisoning are twice as high.
Your chances of dying from taking a fall are nearly twice as high as dying
in a firearm assault, and your chance of dying in a car accident are four
times as high.

I don't feel the *need* to carry a gun for the same reason I don't feel the
*need* to hire someone to taste my food before eating, or to have myself
fitted with springs to prevent injury in a fall, or to have a NASCAR-type
roll cage installed in my family sedan.

Likewise, we don't *need* to carry a gun, unless we buy milk in stupid
places or hang out where the danger from gun violence is known to be high.
We may *want* to carry one, for a variety of reasons. But most of them make
little or no sense on the basis of probabilities.


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.

You're being deliberately obtuse, I think. I mentioned those only because
they
were the first three that sprang to mind. If those were the only such
events
of the last ten years, then you'd have a point. They're not, and you know
it.

How many more such examples do you want to add to the list? You asked me if
I pay attention to the news and then you gave examples of wacko mass
murders. Did you intend to give examples of something else? Because the
wacko mass murders are too rare to bother about.

If you're going to start adding up all of the individual reasons for having
a gun, then pay attention to the other things I said. I said the legitimate
reason for carrying a gun is self-defense, not preventing mass murders,
because you'll never get a chance in your lifetime, or in 10,000 lifetimes,
to encounter one of those. And I said that your chances of needing a gun in
any case are so vanishingly small that it makes no sense, statistically,
unless you choose to live or work somewhere dangerous.

But purely rational odds-making is not the only issue on self-defense. If
you want to carry, by all means, carry. I was responding to the OP who
wondered why we have to carry guns to go out for milk. And my response is,
we don't have to carry. Statistically, there is little rational basis for
carring a gun, unless we stupidly get our milk in dangerous places. As Don
said, and as I've experienced, most people have almost no chance of ever
encountering a drawn gun except on a shooting range. And that's the fact.


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.

I wasn't arguing with you over the likelihood of an armed citizen being
able
to stop such an event. I'm just objecting to your egregiously, absurdly
false
claim that such dangers are confined to "the dangerous parts of our most
dangerous cities." Certainly they are more common there, but manifestly
they
are not *unique* there.

I didn't say they're confined there. I said that, except for such dangerous
places, it makes little sense statistically. And that's the fact, too.

--
Ed Huntress