As my last paragraph said, there is only one good outcome, namely that your gun is available and of use to you at the time of the attack. There are a number of bad scenarios, such as accidents and the like. The odds are against a gun having a good outcome. Actually a neutral outcome is by far the most likely. You will never be attacked and you won’t have any accidents or other untoward incidents as a result of the gun. But at least the gun dealer will have made a buck.
The disease analogy won’t wash. Disease treatment is applied only after a disease is diagnosed. And it doesn’t happen in a matter of seconds.
You are welcome to your self-defense fantasy and if it gives you comfort fine, as long as you actually wait until an attack happens Or are you planning preemptive strikes?
I’m not sure what your source for this statistic is, but I don’t think this is beyond dispute. I’m aware of several studies of this issue. Depending on what outcomes are considered, the data source, and other important points (which are rarely given nearly as much coverage as the bottom line, though the bottom line is meaningless without knowing what it represents), the reported good:bad ratio varies from well over 1:1 to well under it.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the outcomes, both good and bad, cannot actually be viewed as random events for a single individual. Gun “accidents,” for example, are almost inevitably the result of negligent handling; someone who knows and follows the extremely simple rules for gun safety has reduced his accident risk factor to something very close to zero. Gun safety and training courses are available, and I echo lots of other posters in saying that if you want to reduce your risk you should almost certainly take some.
Some disease treatments are prophylactic. If “being prepared” has any analogy with health, it is probably to such long-term measures as proper exercise and diet, which for best results should be applied well before diagnosis of any disease. (And like diet and exercise, they typically require a nontrivial amount of discipline if they are to succeed.)
While I agree that the OP is making an irrational decision if he’s basing his decision just on the VT shootings, this strikes me as being pretty condescending. Whatever the ratio of “good” gun self-defense uses to “bad” outcomes, it’s not even close to zero. Preparation for self-defense shouldn’t be dismissed as a fantasy.
I know I mentioned something similar in another thread, and I don’t want you guys thinking I have bullet-proof vests on the brain, but…
If this is something that really concerns you, have you considered buying a bullet-proof vest and wearing it in public? I imagine that it might do as much or even more to help you in the eventuality you are describing. You can do this in addition to or in lieu of carrying a concealed weapon with you.
Well, granted a “bullet proof vest” (I grant that there is no such thing) would carry zero risk of an accident that could harm someone. However, with proper safety precautions, there is also almost zero risk of an accident with a firearm (there could still be a mechanical failure, however unlikely).
Body armor would also only protect your torso, and not provide a way to stop an attack, only a way to reduce or minimize the damage that an attack causes. But since you are unable to meet the level of force of your attacker (assuming you don’t have a firearm), the attacker can continue to exercise force (shoot you) until the vest fails, or he hits your head or a major artery.
Carrying a firearm is also less physically demanding that wearing a vest. Body armor is heavy, bulky and make you sweat more. The more effective the body armor (threat level it is rated for) in most cases the heavier and bulkier it is.
The advantage of the bullet-proof vest is that it gives you a better chance of surviving the first shots and give you the time to pull out your weapon, if you have one. If it’s a question of surviving a deadly attack, I think that the comfort level should be a secondary consideration. Also I presume that you would be allow to wear the bullet-proof vest in certain areas where carrying a gun is forbidden (e.g. a school campus).
For example, one of the young women in a classroom where many people died (in the Virginia Tech shooting) survived by playing dead. So if the killer doesn’t realize you’re wearing the vest (hidden under your clothes) you can lie down and play dead. A strategy that has proven to be effective at least in this one case.
I was just commenting on making a choice between the two. Obviously both is ‘better’ if you need them.
In most places the body armor will not be regulated, although some jurisdictions regulate the purchase and possession of body armor to persons without a criminal record, or ban it altogether.
Sorry CynicalGabe, I edited my post a second time while you were responding. What about the places where you can’t carry a gun? Wouldn’t it be wise then to wear the body armor?
I can never get my thoughts down exactly right the first time! Sorry. For more clarity, let me add a few words to my sentence:
So if the killer doesn’t realize you’re wearing the vest (hidden under your clothes) you can lie down and play dead after a short to the torso. A strategy that has proven to be effective at least in this one case.
Caridwen - I personally feel the need for either, so feel free to come on down to my part of town! However, I think that if a person (such as the OP of this thread) is concerned about dying in a mass shoot-out, then the body armor is a useful tool for personal safety, with several advantages over the concealed weapon (available to more people, can be used in more locations).
Body armor is a good and useful thing in a confrontation with an armed whack-job. So is a gun. They are not, however, interchangeable. That is the reason that people who daily face a higher risk of lethal encounters prefer to have both. I prefer to have both. If I could have only one, I would choose the gun. By taking advantage of things like, cover, concealment, and motion, one my survive being shot at. The gun, though, offers the chance to stop the threat. The vest does not.
I realize I’m coming into this thread pretty late, but I was just wondering what percentage of the shooting deaths in the United States are “random”, or involved victims that had no connection to their shooter. That is, people who didn’t know the killer personally or weren’t involved in some activity (i.e. drug dealing) that would have made them a likely target.
While I don’t know the exact statistics, I’m guessing the number of people in that category who were killed in shooting rampages and such is a very small minority of gun deaths. Your chances of being run over by a car is vastly greater than that of being shot by an insane gunman.
So basically, Soapbox Monkey, by buying a gun you’ve decided to help make society an even more distrustful and violent place despite the extremely low likelihood that something like this will ever happen to you.
My point is that the only type of outcome that is good is if there is an attack on you and you are successful in defending yourself with a gun. The latter is by no means assured. Armed police are taken by surprise and shot, or their gun is taken from them. The probability that an untrained individual walking along will be prepared for an attack is pretty small I would think. If it isn’t then people are a lot more paranoid than I am.
There are several types of bad outcomes. Accidents, shooting the wrong person in an attack, the attacker takes you gun away and shoots you with it. Not everyone is psycologically ready or trained to know when and where to use a gun. As I understand things, a common homicide is family member shooting each other in a moment of rage.
I do believe that the downside of depending upon a gun for defense greatly outweighs the up side.
I would say that all gun accidents are a result of negligence. You have a lot more faith in people, en masse, dutifuly going to weapons safety classes and getting rigorous training in how, where and when to use a gun. Just being able to not shoot someone by accident is really not enough.
The particular disease cited in the analogy was cancer and concerned a “cure.” The analogy assumed you already had cancer and that chemotherapy was the cure. If you interpret the analogy by what it says, you should wait to procure the gun until after the attack occurs.
Well, maybe my “fantasy” statement was a trifle out of line so I’ll take it back. However I’m quite tired of hearing that a gun is a general defense against attacks. The gun is no good until the attack has happened and then it can easily become a weapon of retribution and not defense, wind up killing someone who gets caught in the melee. or be used agains the gun owner.
My position is that the number of types of possible bad outcomes greatly exceeds the number of possible good outcomes. All outcomes are unlikely in that it’s highly probable that you will never need to use you gun, accidents and the like are not common but the fact that there are many more bad possiblities than good makes a gun for defense a bad choice. In actual fact, I believe that we all live as long as we do because of probabilities, in short, luck. Really bad things are relatively rare. If they weren’t I don’t think we would be here to wring our hands over the bad.
And, I think the only way to avoid being at least a little roughed up in an attack is to act preemptively.
So what about carrying a gun for snakes when I’m out in the woods? My negligence of stepping on a snake vs. my negligence of shooting myself in the foot?
I must disagree with that, but I’ll admit that I improve my odds more by wearing my seat belt and not smoking than carrying a concealed weapon or wearing a vest.
When I was still taking my dog for a walk on the desert I occasionally, very occasionally, saw a rattlesnake. I left them alone.
Let me give you a couple of illustrations.
Imagine 36 airplanes flying along in formation. All of them have the same physical characteristics. On each plane are six people randomly chosen a long time ago to be a crew. They are all a haphazard mixture of devout, atheist, honest, liars and such. Suddenly there is an artillery burst that blows the wing off one of them, followed by a hit on another that folds its wings and both disappear from view of the others in the formation leaving behind nothing but a wisp of smoke.
Why those particular planes and people? The gun that fired the shell was probably not even aiming at the planes that were hit.
My par;ents were driving to Iowa City to visit me and my wife. On a highway curve a pickup truck drifted off to the right on the shoulder, overcorrected and came across the highway sideways right in from of them. The driver had fallen asleep. Why didn’t the driver drift off just a little later so he could hit them head on?
I remember one guy in VN who was obsessed w/ the idea that he was going to die. He wore his flak vest and steel pot all the time. Some made fun of him, but I think most of us felt sorry for the poor bastard, he was driving himself nuts w/ his obsession. I can’t recall for sure, but I think they sent him back early. The rest of us usually only wore our vests and helmets when we left the camp and, even then, we were pretty casual about it. We were a construction outfit and you can’t do much work wearing that stuff, the damn things were heavy and bulky. Add in some 90-100 degree temps. and you’re miserable. I’m sure they’ve improved them in the years that have passed, but I sympathize w/ those guys in Iraq and Afghanistan.
