re: #471 Political Atheist

Okay, well I think they mainly do and the declining gun accident stats show it.

No, you don’t really think most people actually access crime statistics, gun accident statistics, etc. before buying a gun. At least, I really hope you’re not laboring under that delusion. Of every gun owner I know (more than twenty), none of them have done such a calculation. If you do really think most people do that, I don’t know what to say, except I guess i”ll have to do a study sometime to prove this, to me, rather trivially obvious fact.

Edit: To expand on why it’s trivially obvious: People don’t do this sort of rational calculation about almost anything. Many people don’t have an understanding of statistics necessary to do that calculation. Even if we’re sticking with the bare-bones simplest “What’s the chance of me, in my neighborhood, being in a situation where the gun would be useful vs. the gun causing an accident/being used in a suicide/being stolen”, that’s more statistical grinding than most people ever do. When you add in other factors that you should really assess—like people honestly self-assessing how responsible they’ll be, and how secure their storage is—it gets legitimately tricky.

But in any case it seems you understood what I said just fine, it was simply agreement that was lacking. That seems to happen a lot when we talk.

No, I had no clue what you meant. I’m being honest with you, so please stop accusing me of being dishonest.

Most people do not do a real calculation of risk-benefit when buying a gun, and, sadly, very few responsible gun owners encourage that calculation or give their advice and knowledge to prevent people from getting guns based on false ideas of needing them for protection, or responsible gun owners discouraging people from buying guns because they’re drunks or simply are forgetful and irresponsible, etc.

Responsible gun owners should encourage responsible gun ownership, and that means discouraging gun ownership by those who don’t need them.