To Carry or Not

I live in a very nice neighborhood and nothing exciting has happened in the 15yrs I have lived there.

While watching TV at about midnight I hear my neighbor yell. I got up and looked out the window to see what’s up and some guy is running across my yard. I went outside and my neighbor is on phone with the cops. He told me he went to put out the garbage and found this guy in his car in his garage. Luckily the intruder was piss scared to be caught and ran off. Though the very next night the guy comes back and hits a house 2 doors down, also getting caught by the owner and running off.

The point is you can go almost you whole life(im 22) with nothing happening. Then it all changes in an instant. Obviously this guy wasn't much of a threat, but he easily could have had a knife or gun and not just run off when he was caught.

Let’s say you buy a $600 gun, and spend $300 on ammo and what not. I know compared to what most of us spend on guns, $900 isn’t a lot, but it’s a lot better than your fist or a knife. That comes out to $2.50 a day.

Who doesn't think their life is worth more than $2.50 a day?
 
Let’s say you buy a $600 gun, and spend $300 on ammo and what not. I know compared to what most of us spend on guns, $900 isn’t a lot, but it’s a lot better than your fist or a knife. That comes out to $2.50 a day. ...

Do you throw all your guns away after only one year's use? If so, could you tell us where you dump them? [wink]

With decent care any good quality gun, particularly the sort one would keep for home protection, is goning to be good for at least a hundred years.

Ken
 
Let’s say you buy a $600 gun, and spend $300 on ammo and what not. I know compared to what most of us spend on guns, $900 isn’t a lot, but it’s a lot better than your fist or a knife. That comes out to $2.50 a day.

Who doesn't think their life is worth more than $2.50 a day?
Flawed math, you are not buying your life, you are buying 1/2000 of it at best, most likely less.

Let's bring some math back in here.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_17.pdf

Look at this list. Remove the things you think will never happen to you or you can't prevent. How many people does it kill a year? Is it greater then the paltry 17,000 homicides?

Cancer and heart disease, %50, Homicide, %.7. When it comes to minimizing risk, homicide is the last thing you should look at. The time/money you spend training, and the effort you spend carrying brings you paltry benefits in comparison to the other things you could be doing with your time/money. Also recognize that cancer and heart disease are far more likely to affect you than homicide is. Homicide rarely occurs at random as I have mentioned previously (though the media and police would have you believe otherwise). I highly recommend studying the FBI uniform crime reports.

We don't need more anecdotes as we are not debating whether crime exists. We are debating it's likelihood of effecting you vs. the costs of ensuring that it does not. Remove emotion from the issue, emotions and a gun will not save your when that aneurism hits, nor the cancer fueled by lead poisoning from inadequate cleanup after/during those 3 days 2,000 round training course. Inanimate objects are not worthy of our blind faith, we should make them justify their existence like all our property and time. Or maybe I'm just cheap...
 
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Flawed math, you are not buying your life, you are buying 1/2000 of it at best, most likely less.

$900 to buy 1/2000 of my life? Sounds like a bargain to me. I rate my life to be worth more than $1,800,000.

Then again, economic analyses like these are missing a very large part of the puzzle. I expect, over the course of my life, to make net payments to all of my various insurers: the sum total of my payments will be more than I'll ever receive in claims. I prefer certain small losses to avoid unpredictable catastrophic losses. Insurance may not cover everything and a gun will not always keep me alive. Nonetheless, I'm willing to pay the premia whether in money or ammo.
 
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