In Light of the Recent Shootings....

Sam1911 seemed to take umbrage with my calling his arguments "spurious" and he was correct that I used the wrong term. On reflection I should have called his arguments "ignorant". For someone who is using math and risk assessment / risk management to make his argument, he seems ignorant of those subjects.

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That's a strong claim, but I don't claim to be an academician or mathematician. If you can show how I've misused the math to relate odds to practical human-scale choices, please do so. I've asked for correction before several times throughout this discussion.

Please don't simply insult me, though, explain how the difference between zero chance and a 1 in many millions chance is to be properly considered, by any one person deciding whether to react to that chance or not.

Do you refuse to drive within the fall radius of a city crane? Do you put a life preserver in your car because you might drown in a car crash (or sudden flood)? Etc.

Mathematically speaking, the relative increase in probabilities between zero and 1 in 17 million isn't just huge, it is infinite, which anyone who has taken basic algebra could tell you.

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Of course it is. But that seems to be getting farther away from human scale relevance, not closer. The fact that there are infinite numbers that decrease in size as you approach zero (the old mathematical conundrum of dividing a quantity in half and half again and again -- and never quite getting all the way to zero), doesn't seem to inform this discussion at all. Your chances of being killed by a mass shooter don't rise simply because there are infinite divisions of numbers between 1:17 million and true zero -- any more than you can claim to be a millionaire because you've got a dollar in your pocket and your calculator can divide that $1 into infinite smaller values.

If you can explain how to use this insight practically to answer the question at hand, and how I've done so incorrectly, please do.

The point I was making on improving theoretical safety in the aviation and nuclear industries, is that your odds of dying on a flight is 1 in 29.4 million, your odds of dying from a commercial nuclear accident in the US are much less than that, as it has never happened. Yet the federal government will (and has) shut down reactors and grounded hundreds of planes with no regard to duration, expense or effectiveness of modifications (I guess the chemical industry is held to a lower standard) to improve the safety of already absurdlysafe systems.

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Yes, you did say these things, but didn't discuss them in any depth. The airline industry is a large world-wide industry which plays what inherently feels like a dangerous game with people's lives. I.e. hurling hundreds of thousands of them into the sky every day and then bringing them back to earth in a controlled way. It looks dangerous and unnatural to people and being able to fly from place to place is still (in human history) a relatively novel development. Air crashes are still a terror so grave that they become plot points in many movies and TV shows -- even though flying is actually FAR safer than driving our own cars as we do every day. Every crash, and every fatality, threatens the confidence of the people in this crazy endeavor. Reductions in bookings have drastic impacts on a low-margin, highly competitive industry. They MUST do all they conceivably can to eliminate every single possible death in order to keep their industry alive.

On top of that, they are very heavily regulated and overseen as an industry, and have the weight of several regulatory bodies holding them to task. Based on the number of deaths involved, per flight or per seat sold, this isn't terribly logical seeing as we are pretty much ok -- no great public outcry, no government investigation -- when more people die every day in car wrecks than died on 9/11. Nobody really even thinks about it.

The same goes for the nuclear power industry, except even moreseo. No, nobody has ever died (in the US) from a nuclear power accident. But this is an industry that barely is allowed to exist because in the fear-gripped view of the public it is the equivalent of toying with some unholy combination of aliens from another dimension, black holes, and Satan himself. The fear of nuclear energy (not just of nuclear accidents, necessarily) is so strong that while we've faced brownouts and energy cost fluctuations and fears about burning fossil fuels, and ties to middle eastern oil, etc., we didn't allow ourselves to build ONE SINGLE new nuclear energy plant in the US in the 20 years between 1996 and 2016. Yeah, we have to keep those old plants -- which are approaching their end of life sooner than we'd like to think -- alive and healthy and safe. AND we have multiple federal regulatory agencies wielding massive authority over that entire industry. Go figure, they've got a never-ending safety focus.

Are those anything at all like our average Joe citizen planning to go about his day-to-day with a rifle in his trunk? Really?

We, as a society and individuals, treat different risks that have similar outcomes differently.

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And that's probably the truest comment you've made. If we ranked our dangers by likelihood and consequences (odds and stakes) and started doing something useful to to combat the most present of those risks one-by-one, we'd be out of time, energy, and cash long before we'd gotten through those that are "still pretty likely" to kill us. We probably wouldn't have enough lifetime left to get around to worrying about mass shooters.

It is virtually impossible to estimate the impact of carrying a long gun in a vehicle on the probabilities of deaths and injuries due to mass shootings, until a significant number of people start doing it.

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This is at least prima facie true. But we can make several general conclusions based on what we do know already:
1) There are very, very, very, VERY few mass shootings, compared with our population numbers. The odds of any one person being at one are extremely tiny. Way down at the diminishing tail of the risk curve, with things like swing-set deaths and murder by latex party balloon.
2) There aren't all that many people who keep rifles in their trunk, and there isn't any reason to expect that those numbers will change much. I can't think of a reason why they would. Can you?
3) Given points 1 and 2, the odds of someone who does have a rifle in their trunk meeting a mass shooter are some function of very low odds times very low odds -- which equals even lower odds, still.
4) Ignoring 1, 2, and 3, and allowing that one of our rifle carriers has met a mass shooting, we now have the knotty problem of the list of questions I brought up (again) in post 303:

Having a rifle stored in your trunk or truck is only of some possible use in instances where:
a) you're actually THERE. This is vanishingly unlikely. Again, on the order of being one of those unlucky souls who manages to strangle to death in their own bedsheets, or be killed by a swing set, and
b) you aren't killed by the bad guy immediately, and
c) you're able to escape the area, and
d) the attack goes on so long that you have the actual quantity of time needed to go to your vehicle, retrieve your gun, return to the scene, and engage the bad guy, and
e) there is some way for you to set yourself in a position to be able to confront/see/aim at the bad guy, and
f) returning to the scene of the mass killing, holding a rifle of your own, seems like the RIGHT thing to do.
Among various other likelihood-reducing factors.

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So, you have to get to the end of a list of factors, each of which reduce the already astronomically low odds by significant factors, before you can make a study of what happens when a rifle carry guy meets a mass shooter.

We may someday have an (one) anecdote to look at. I doubt we'll have "data."

I consider any number of people dying needlessly to be a large number of deaths. How about you?

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No. That doesn't make sense. If you can lecture me that I'm doing math wrong, I'm surprised that you'd make an appeal to emotion at the end of this and completely ignore the concept of statistical significance. You've made, essentially, the "If only one life is saved..." plea. And we've heard that one often enough that I would have imagined we'd be immune to it.

You know you can't.
If you could , I would be buying the winning lotto ticket every week. You gave it a good effort though, I'll give you that.

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If our friend is going to call my arguments ignorant, and disparage my maths, I'd like him to at least try.

Nuclear said:

Sam1911 seemed to take umbrage with my calling his arguments "spurious" and he was correct that I used the wrong term. On reflection I should have called his arguments "ignorant". For someone who is using math and risk assessment / risk management to make his argument, he seems ignorant of those subjects.

Mathematically speaking, the relative increase in probabilities between zero and 1 in 17 million isn't just huge, it is infinite, which anyone who has taken basic algebra could tell you.

The point I was making on improving theoretical safety in the aviation and nuclear industries, is that your odds of dying on a flight is 1 in 29.4 million, your odds of dying from a commercial nuclear accident in the US are much less than that, as it has never happened. Yet the federal government will (and has) shut down reactors and grounded hundreds of planes with no regard to duration, expense or effectiveness of modifications (I guess the chemical industry is held to a lower standard) to improve the safety of already absurdly safe systems. We, as a society and individuals, treat different risks that have similar outcomes differently.

It is virtually impossible to estimate the impact of carrying a long gun in a vehicle on the probabilities of deaths and injuries due to mass shootings, until a significant number of people start doing it.

I consider any number of people dying needlessly to be a large number of deaths. How about you?

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If you're going to play that way....

1 is a large number when compared to the infinite numbers that are less than 1 but not when compared to 350 million.


It doesn't even take basic algebra to understand that; just ask any 3rd grader.

Theres a difference between a huge # quantitative wise and infinite # of #'s comparatively wise. Dont confuse the two.



I still go back to that if there were 2x more house fire deaths this year than last year, I wouldnt change my smoke detector set up.

However, if my neighbor did, I would understand why and see the potential that it could save my butt in a rare circumstance. Thank you kind neighbor.


Guns gets stolen from cars just like from houses. IMO, that doesnt mean dont keep guns at home, it means keep them relatively secured in your car just as you should in your house.

It's all good unless you're irresponsible.

I still go back to that if there were 2x more house fire deaths this year than last year, I wouldnt change my smoke detector set up.

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There is a fundamental point in this that I've tried to make over and over again and I'm not sure if it's just really unpopular with this audience here at THR, or if I'm not saying it well.

There are a lot of things that could kill us. The National Institute of Health list them and produces sets of statistics regularly which explain which ones have killed the most of us. And if you look through those lengthy reports, you'll see all sorts of diseases, injuries, accidents, phenomena, critters, bugs, chemicals, events, and so forth which are to blame for deaths of a certain number of Americans every year. We can get pretty clear ideas of which ones are most likely to hurt us by looking at the rates per hundred thousand of our population.

We could, if we really really cared about saving our own lives, take very careful stock of ourselves in light of every one of those threats. We could decide just how much weight that threat is likely to represent to us based on our heredity and habits, and in most of those cases we could do something to reduce the chances of that particular thing killing us.

A lot of those things would require time spent, and a lot of them would require some money expended. None of us has unlimited time or money. But we're talking about trying to save our lives here. I'm sure we would all do everything we could to reduce the risks of those great and dangerous killers.

It is pretty unlikely, if we were really logical about this effort, that guns would show up anywhere near the upper end in our list of most important life-saving strategies. Violence of any sort is not one of the top 10 killers of Americans. (Unless you count suicide which is always very problematic to discuss here among so many Libertarians who really don't cotton very much to the idea that someone's going to take away their guns so that they can't end their own lives if they so choose.)

When we do finally get to violence as a cause of death, it is only rational to grasp what kinds of violence are common. The most common kinds of violence in the US don't particularly need a gun response from most of us reading here, because our primary strategy is completely avoiding those sorts of people doing those sorts of things in those sorts of places. However we all know that that's no cure all and some violence will still befall those of us who are wise about our associates and our activities. Those instances of violence are still far, far, far and away represented by common street crime, hold-ups, robberies, home invasions, Etc. So in those instances where we do need a gun it's going to be a personally carried sidearm, or it's going to be our home defense weapon.

Once we've dealt with that, there would come an enormous pile of lethal factors which range from not very likely, to very very unlikely, and on to "wow, that's really unlikely." Most of these things we are never even going to think about, and certainly will never never lift a finger to protect ourselves from.

And way out at the tail end of that list you find things like being killed by the pet dog, being killed by the swing set in your backyard, death at the hands of a mass murderer, and then slightly less commonly, being killed by a balloon as I mentioned, or dying in a plane crash as member Nuclear has suggested.

What I find really kind of frustrating and not very self-aware of us, is that this is a gun forum and so we get pretty worked up about how much we probably ought to go put a rifle in our car trunk. We do guns, we like guns, guns are the answer. If guns aren't the answer then you're not giving the problem enough thought.

And we like to talk about how illogical and unscientific all of the gun opponents, soccer moms, and "sheeple" are who aren't smart enough to arm up to defend themselves. What fools! They'll be sorry! Meanwhile we are blissfully ignoring probably thousands of other risks that are somewhere between quite a bit more likely, and a whole lot more likely to actually kill us.

I am not arguing that we really should go out in the backyard and cut down the swing set because, hey, we need to be consistent. I'm arguing that it is good and proper we don't pay attention to that risk, generally. Swing sets are neat, life isn't without risk, go have a good time. But the unpopular position that I'm taking here is, don't let our love for our rifles, and our enthusiasm for keeping them handy, lead us to irrational conclusions and statements about real levels of risk, or to make impractical responses to it.

I'm reminded of a few of the (weaker) scientists I've worked with over the years, who, in reports would run out 5 or 6 decimal points in a value calculated from integers, neglecting the fact "significant figures" are critical. It sure seems valid, because infinity and non-zero number application seem like complex theories - the human brain works best in a tangible scale, so we struggle to manage incredibly large or incredibly small numbers. In my line of work, when I'm talking to "head shed" folks, I've many times related that the distance from a proton to its nearest electron, relative to its size, is over 10 times greater than the relative distance from the Earth to the Sun... Considering the average American drives ~800,000 miles in their lifetime, meaning it would take 116 LIFETIMES to drive to the sun, more than 1,300 lifetimes to relatively drive between a proton and an electron, and over 45,000 lifetimes - not generations, but sequential lifetimes of driving - to drive between two air molecules... So if the first homo sapiens had jumped in the car and started driving an equivalent distance, us sitting here about 180,000 generations later would only be about 5% on the journey between two molecules... The distance and the timeline becomes incomprehensible, because the numbers are so large - but remember, we're talking about 0.000000004 meters... Kinda mind blowing (intentionally so) to consider inside that teeny, tiny number - the distance between two air molecules - there's more than 180,000 scaled generations of driving...

So while it might be true there are infinite numbers between 0 and 0.001, the context of human lives is an integer game. 1:17,000,000 is 0.00000006 people. Have you ever met a partial person? In the context of 350 million Americans, it's a real number, about 21 people per year, a non-zero number, but not a tangible threat. Comparatively, for perspective, 22 veterans take their own lives EVERY DAY, out of 180,000 people who enlist annually. So we're talking about 1 in 25 people who enlist will come home and take their own life, whereas 1:17,000,000 people will be killed by mass murderers. 175 people die from drug overdoses every day. Over 3,000 people die per day in car wrecks. A quarter million people die each year, over 650 per day, from medication mix ups...

Fall out shelters were all the rage in the cold war era, how many of them actually protected American lives? Lots of preparations made, money spent, and panic passed around, but how many American lives were ever lost in nuclear fall out?

Again, for perspective, over 3.5million homes are burglarized annually, in a million of which people are home, and over a quarter million of which those people become victims of violent crime. So your house does have a 1% chance, any given year, to be burglarized, and about 10% of those folks befall physical harm. That's one out of every 1,400 Americans, each year, harmed during home invasions...

It's all about priorities. It's naive to think we can plan and prepare for every eventuality, so it behooves us to prepare for the most clear and present dangers first. As BSA has cited, there are plenty of violent offenders in the US, happy to prey on law-abiding citizens, but preparing for attack by fire breathing dragons doesn't suit.

Um, wow yes!

Where Sam sees deception in BSA1's statements,

Sam1911 said:

Two possibilities:
1) You are lying...

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I see sarcasm. Lovely, dripping, delicious, entertaining sarcasm.

Sarcasm in response to aggressive rhetoric is fair game. And something I enjoy seeing played well.



But back to the main purpose of this feast...how to respond to a very small Risk...

Sam1911 said:

There are long lists of things those agencies and companies figure out to do which all contribute to the safety of their enterprises. They do the most important, useful, likely to be broadly effective ones first, and keep going down the list until they reach some point of diminishing returns where the money expended to do a thing isn't commensurate to the actual risk level they'd be countering...

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Common ground! It is absolutely true that cost matters. Let's walk down this path a ways further by asking three questions, and then by doing the associated math:


What if the incremental cost of responding to a risk is absolutely Zero?

What if the Risk itself is absolutely Zero?

Admittedly, the answers to both of these questions are trivial, but examining them will help us understand the answer to the third question:

What if neither incremental costs nor Risks are really Zero but are only approaching Zero?


Enter our friend (and what we're REALLY discussing here), the relationship between costs and benefits...the cost / benefit ratio.



To find the answer to the first question, we know that elementary school math tells us that if the cost of controlling a Risk is really Zero, but the benefit (the reduction in Risk) is some number that is greater than Zero (no matter how small), then the cost/benefit ratio is Zero...meaning that a real benefit (no matter how small) comes at Zero cost. The obvious resulting rational conclusion: the benefit comes at no cost, so implement the mitigating factor!

Applying this result to our discussion: I'm considering, say, whether I should move a rifle I already own from my safe to my vehicle together with a couple of magazines I already own and ammo I already own. The cost here is Zero, and if the Risk mitigated is greater than Zero (even if only by a tiny amount) then it is rational to put a rifle in your truck or trunk. Even if the potential benefit is really small, like 17 in 350 million small.


Regarding the second question, elementary school math also tells us that any non-zero number divided by Zero is infinite. If there is really Zero Risk, then spending even a penny of expense to mitigate that Risk isn't justified.

Again applying this result: I wasn't at the Route 91 festival, so I faced Zero Risk of dying or being injured in that shooting. Putting a rifle in my trunk to counter that precisely Zero risk would not be rational.



As I indicated above, the answers to both of these questions are trivial, but they are accurate. But they help us evaluate the third question, which models how human beings really evaluate and respond to small Risks.

Elementary school math doesn't tell us how to calculate the cost/benefit ratio if both the cost and Risk are each approaching Zero. Thankfully, Sir Isaac Newton and his calculus does. His solution is elegant yet simple: determine whether the cost or the benefit is approaching Zero faster, set that number to Zero, and then apply elementary school math to the result.

Here are two real examples:

I shoot. Quite a bit. I enjoy it. I reload, so the costs of practice are pretty low. I already own a pistol, and a good concealment holster, so hardware costs are low. I'm going to shoot whether I carry every day or not. I'm considering whether to start carrying every day. The biggest incremental expense (in this case simply a hassle) of carrying every day is the pain in the side of carrying a full-size firearm IWB.

This incremental cost (the pain in the side) controls the following Risk: I might have to look at myself in the mirror in some future day and wonder if I could have saved my loved one from being injured or killed in an assault, if only I had had my gun with me.

In this case, the cost gets to Zero pretty quickly, and the benefit of never having to ask myself that question is always real, even if the probability that I or a loved one are ever involved in an assault is low. The conclusion is absolutely rational. This is part of the reason that I carry every day, where legally allowed. And that's OK for me.


By contrast, here's how sheeple do this math: They perceive that political, financial, time and personal costs of learning to defend themselves with a firearm are VERY large, definitely higher than Zero. By contrast, they perceive that the Risks of assault that they face are tiny, maybe even approaching Zero. The cost/ benefit ratio becomes huge for these people, and they decide to either ignore the risk (it'll never happen to me because I live in a nice neighborhood) or by transferring the responsibility to control it to, say, the police. This conclusion, for them, is also absolutely rational. They choose not to pay the price to become sheep dogs. And that's OK for them.


People evaluate low, but non-Zero Risk intuitively, using this approach, all the time. And they do it correctly for their own evaluation of costs, benefits, and Risk. They don't need to know anything about Newton; he just described the underlying intuitive calculation in mathematical terms.

Where Sam sees deception in BSA1's statements,
...
I see sarcasm. Lovely, dripping, delicious, entertaining sarcasm.
Sarcasm in response to aggressive rhetoric is fair game. And something I enjoy seeing played well.

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Sarcasm can be entertaining! It also can be used to cover a poor argument. Sometimes pulling off the mask of sarcasm reveals there's no substance to the argument behind it. In this case, we already knew there was no substance to the argument before sarcasm was tried.

Enter our friend (and what we're REALLY discussing here), the relationship between costs and benefits...the cost / benefit ratio.

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Let's say we're welcoming our friend here back to the discussion; seeing as I've been discussing cost -v.- benefit ratio for the last 203 posts. (Brought up in post 156.)

Applying this result to our discussion: I'm considering, say, whether I should move a rifle I already own from my safe to my vehicle together with a couple of magazines I already own and ammo I already own. The cost here is Zero, and if the Risk mitigated is greater than Zero (even if only by a tiny amount) then it is rational to put a rifle in your truck or trunk. Even if the potential benefit is really small, like 17 in 350 million small.

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Ah ha, but the cost here isn't zero. You have a rifle you can put in your car, but in your counting of very small risks you have to include various factors I've suggested already: hassle of carrying the rifle and ammo in and out of the house every day. And the attendant risk of that rifle being stolen (either "oh darn" or "a really big deal" depending on your feelings of personal responsibility for what happens to stolen guns), even if you do take it in every night, and probably triply so if you don't. And the cost and hassle of having to install some sort of securing device for that rifle in the trunk, because you're REALLY not going to make it that easy on the thieves, right? And the inevitable wear and tear on the rifle from being stored in a car trunk along with the groceries, kids' sports equipment, random junk, and wheel jack. The risk of the rifle being damaged in case of an accident, etc., etc. These are actual costs. They may be easily shrugged off by many, buy when the benefits are extremely low/unlikely, small costs become relatively important in any intelligent C/B analysis.

Elementary school math doesn't tell us how to calculate the cost/benefit ratio if both the cost and Risk are each approaching Zero. Thankfully, Sir Isaac Newton and his calculus does. His solution is elegant yet simple: determine whether the cost or the benefit is approaching Zero faster, set that number to Zero, and then apply elementary school math to the result.
...
People evaluate low, but non-Zero Risk intuitively, using this approach, all the time. And they do it correctly for their own evaluation of costs, benefits, and Risk. They don't need to know anything about Newton; he just described the underlying intuitive calculation in mathematical terms.

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I certainly enjoyed the explanations here, though they were necessarily abbreviated. I wonder, a bit, about the statement that "they do it correctly for their own evaluation..." That would suggest that whatever answer someone came up with -- regardless of how poorly they recognized the actual risks they faced, or in this case how heavily they exaggerated those risks in their own minds -- the answer is correct. Literally speaking, both the guy who says "no, I'm not keeping a rifle in my trunk because of mass shooters," and his neighbor who says, "No way I'm leaving the house without my rifle!" are equally right. That's got a pleasant sort of almost Confucian ring to it, but I don't see that kind of "whatever you believe, is right" answer appealing much to a statistician.

I'd find that an interesting assertion from someone who contributed to a HAZOPs study on airliners crashing into chemical storage tanks. In that case, the costs of prevention (high but surmountable) were deemed to outweigh the risks (low, but with incredibly serious stakes), so action wasn't taken. I assume that was the correct answer. What makes that situation have a correct answer, if (apparently) an individual may be correct in going either way?

I viewed the first page of this thread when it first opened, and didn't come back until now, clicking only on the last.

I'd be hard-pressed to even guess what it was about now..

Sam1911 said:

Ah ha, but the cost here isn't zero. You have a rifle you can put in your car, but in your counting of very small risks you have to include various factors I've suggested already:

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Of course you're right. The fact is that no human action has Zero cost. Even one second spent considering a decision prevents others from being considered in its place...which is an opportunity cost. But I had to come up with something that would help illustrate the answer to the first question, and help us move toward the meaningful one, question 3...


Regarding the HAZOPS study I mentioned, I'm not sure that I remember everything that that particular team decided to do. They certainly didn't recommend building a bomb-proof structure around the tank to protect against an airplane crash. I do remember that they did, however, choose to recommend that the area's HAZMAT first responders (the local fire department) be told that a large amount of anhydrous was stored there, to contribute to training that these first responders received in the nature of that particular chemical, and to open the plant to drills that first responders wanted to perform to prepare to reduce the spread of a significant leak should one ever occur. In addition, because the plant was located in a metropolitan area that was rapidly growing straight toward the plant, the team also recommended that plant management be actively involved in planning and zoning decisions made for nearby areas, so that busy roads and housing developments wouldn't ever be built on the plant's doorstep.

The idea was to reduce the consequence of a plane crash into the tank, since the plant and the airport were already built and the team couldn't think of any realistic way to reduce the probability of such a crash occurring.

Fortunately, these same steps also reduced the consequence that would accompany any significant leak. They would also help reduce consequences, for example, if a hose ruptured during filling operations, or if a bonnet came off a valve, opening a leak path, or if a vehicle ran into and broke a branch connection, etc. So the relatively small costs of the same mitigation activities controlled a variety of Risks.


In the same way, if carrying a rifle in the trunk would help respond to a mass shooting AND also reduces the risk of losing chickens due to raccoons in the coop AND also of losing sheep to wolves in the herd, and so on, then for the same costs the benefits still add and the cost/benefit ratio becomes even more favorable to carrying the rifle.


Lastly, this is a great point:

Sam1911 said:

Literally speaking, both the guy who says "no, I'm not keeping a rifle in my trunk because of mass shooters," and his neighbor who says, "No way I'm leaving the house without my rifle!" are equally right. That's got a pleasant sort of almost Confucian ring to it, but I don't see that kind of "whatever you believe, is right" answer appealing much to a statistician.

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Thankfully, the Founders didn't consider too many statistics when they wrote the founding documents of this country. They established this nation with the goal of creating an environment in which citizens were generally free to pursue the kind of life and happiness that made sense to each one of them, however they saw fit, within the limits of good behavior and in consideration of the needs of their neighbors.

As a result, in this country at least, both sheepdogs and sheeple can reach different conclusions about self-defense, even though they both might live in exactly the same environment. Our founding principles say that both outcomes are OK, even though they might be completely different.

(Edited to remove an irrelevant, snide comment about gun grabbers)

MedWheeler said:

I viewed the first page of this thread when it first opened, and didn't come back until now, clicking only on the last.

I'd be hard-pressed to even guess what it was about now..

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Being the culprit of much of this, I apologize!

luzyfuerza said:

Of course you're right. The fact is that no human action has Zero cost. Even one second spent considering a decision prevents others from being considered in its place...which is an opportunity cost. But I had to come up with something that would help illustrate the answer to the first question, and help us move toward the meaningful one, question 3...


Regarding the HAZOPS study I mentioned, I'm not sure that I remember everything that that particular team decided to do. They certainly didn't recommend building a bomb-proof structure around the tank to protect against an airplane crash. I do remember that they did, however, choose to recommend that the area's HAZMAT first responders (the local fire department) be told that a large amount of anhydrous was stored there, to contribute to training that these first responders received in the nature of that particular chemical, and to open the plant to drills that first responders wanted to perform to prepare to reduce the spread of a significant leak should one ever occur. In addition, because the plant was located in a metropolitan area that was rapidly growing straight toward the plant, the team also recommended that plant management be actively involved in planning and zoning decisions made for nearby areas, so that busy roads and housing developments wouldn't ever be built on the plant's doorstep.

The idea was to reduce the consequence of a plane crash into the tank, since the plant and the airport were already built and the team couldn't think of any realistic way to reduce the probability of such a crash occurring.

Fortunately, these same steps also reduced the consequence that would accompany any significant leak. They would also help reduce consequences, for example, if a hose ruptured during filling operations, or if a bonnet came off a valve, opening a leak path, or if a vehicle ran into and broke a branch connection, etc. So the relatively small costs of the same mitigation activities controlled a variety of Risks.


In the same way, if carrying a rifle in the trunk would help respond to a mass shooting AND also reduces the risk of losing chickens due to raccoons in the coop AND also of losing sheep to wolves in the herd, and so on, then for the same costs the benefits still add and the cost/benefit ratio becomes even more favorable to carrying the rifle.


Lastly, this is a great point:



Thankfully, the Founders didn't consider too many statistics when they wrote the founding documents of this country. They established this nation with the goal of creating an environment in which citizens were generally free to pursue the kind of life and happiness that made sense to each one of them, however they saw fit, within the limits of good behavior and in consideration of the needs of their neighbors.

As a result, in this country at least, both sheepdogs and sheeple can reach different conclusions about self-defense, even though they both might live in exactly the same environment. Our founding principles say that both outcomes are OK, even though they might be completely different.

(Edited to remove an irrelevant, snide comment about gun grabbers)

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There’s no such thing as a sheepdog. At least not a civilian one. There’s a reason it’s called self defense.

I'll agree the "sheepdog" thing is a little ... beyond ... cringey, but that's a completely different thread subject.

Thankfully, the Founders didn't consider too many statistics when they wrote the founding documents of this country.

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Exactly so, which is why (as I've had to point out several times) we can look with open eyes at statistics, and make non-doctrinaire choices about how best to prepare for the possibility of violence, without endangering our rights or being unfaithful to our cause. Our rights do not depend on being (or believing that we're) under grave danger of any specific kinds of lethal violence.

As a result, in this country at least, both sheepdogs and sheeple can reach different conclusions about self-defense, even though they both might live in exactly the same environment.

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As Elkins45 points out, we probably should move beyond the unfortunate "sheepdog" and "sheeple" language, which does us no credit. However beneath the inapt terminology, there's a basic truth: That a citizen, whether they prepare for self-defense through philosophical devotion to being armed, or they prepare for self-defense via thoughtful contemplation of the statistics on risks and odds, or they choose not to consider the question at all, all have the freedom to do so as they choose.

Unfortunately, for this thread, that doesn't help answer WHAT choice is most suitable.

Elkins45 said:

There’s no such thing as a sheepdog. At least not a civilian one. There’s a reason it’s called self defense.

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I don't like the word sheepdog, and I will agree that in general one citizen should not try and be a self-appointed protector of other citizens they do not know.

But a man IS a proper protector of his family and household. A business owner IS a proper protector of his employees and customers in his place of business. A pastor/preacher IS a proper protector of his congregation in the house of worship he serves.

One need not be military or LEO to give due consideration to strategies, tactics, and equipment that may be useful in the protection and defense of others. But those others are more properly people in a defined relationship to you rather than strangers in public places.

But a man IS a proper protector of his family and household. A business owner IS a proper protector of his employees and customers in his place of business. A pastor/preacher IS a proper protector of his congregation in the house of worship he serves.

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Wow, this is getting off the topic of our thread here, but I do feel compelled to ask, in what way is it considered true that a business owner is supposed to defend with lethal force his employees and customers? Or a pastor to defend his congregation with a gun?

Is this a purely philosophical statement on your part, or do you know of any jurisdictions where the relationship between a business owner and a customer, or a minister and someone in the pews, is given any special duty, responsibility, or presumption of justification vis-a-vis defense?

One need not be military or LEO to give due consideration to strategies, tactics, and equipment that may be useful in the protection and defense of others. But those others are more properly people in a defined relationship to you rather than strangers in public places.

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Again, I'm not sure this is exactly reflective of how these things actually work. I've seen only a few legal statutes on defense of others which defined who those "others" had to be. (And the one that springs to mind was actually rescinded recently.) In most cases defense of others appears to apply to anyone who would be lawfully justified in using the same level of force (that you're using) in their own defense.


Of course, you're more likely to accurately understand the situation you're observing if it's your brother or daughter being assaulted than if it's some stranger -- who may turn out to be a drug dealer in the midst of being arrested by an undercover officer, for example.

Berger.Fan222 said:

I don't like the word sheepdog, and I will agree that in general one citizen should not try and be a self-appointed protector of other citizens they do not know.

But a man IS a proper protector of his family and household. A business owner IS a proper protector of his employees and customers in his place of business. A pastor/preacher IS a proper protector of his congregation in the house of worship he serves.

One need not be military or LEO to give due consideration to strategies, tactics, and equipment that may be useful in the protection and defense of others. But those others are more properly people in a defined relationship to you rather than strangers in public places.

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http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2017/11/sheepdogs.html
"And here's the big one (hat tip to Terry Trahan.) Sheepdogs aren't good guys. They don't work for the sheep. They work for the shepherd. They don't keep the sheep safe from the wolves because it is the right thing to do. They keep the sheep safe from the wolves so the shepherd can butcher them or shear them on a precise schedule for maximum profit.

Still feel like a hero, Mr. Sheepdog?"

Said by me

I still go back to that if there were 2x more house fire deaths this year than last year, I wouldnt change my smoke detector set up.

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Sam1911 said:

There is a fundamental point in this that I've tried to make over and over again and I'm not sure if it's just really unpopular with this audience here at THR, or if I'm not saying it well.

(Snip)


.

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I don't think it's you.

I said back on the 1st couple of pages that it's hasn't significantly increased enough to change your carry set up, imo.

The media is making it seem that way though.. just like they normally do with any shooting.

Buying in to it is buying into that 'something must be done for the sake of out children'.... at least to some degree.

Some choose to try to ban everything and some choose to arm up.

But the stats don't show a dramatic increase... only the media does.

So, I go along my merry way until I see evidence that it has increased significantly enough to change what and why I carry.

Sam1911 said:

Wow, this is getting off the topic of our thread here, but I do feel compelled to ask, in what way is it considered true that a business owner is supposed to defend with lethal force his employees and customers? Or a pastor to defend his congregation with a gun?

Is this a purely philosophical statement on your part, or do you know of any jurisdictions where the relationship between a business owner and a customer, or a minister and someone in the pews, is given any special duty, responsibility, or presumption of justification vis-a-vis defense?

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This is not the legal forum, and I won't pretend to make a case for a legal duty. But I see it as a moral duty for those who invite guests to protect them. I appreciate that my church attends to this duty with great care and consideration. I also appreciate that some of my employers have attended to this duty with great care and consideration. What does the Golden Rule say again?

Several years ago, a pedestrian crossing one of my pastures was threatened by one of my bulls. I felt a moral duty to use a firearm in defense of the pedestrian. I employed the firearm, and the pedestrian was kept safe. I don't know how the legal situation would have gone had the bull killed or injured the pedestrian. I do know that using the firearm to defend the pedestrian prevented me from needing to find out.

On another occasion several years ago, an individual I was working with on property I controlled was threatened by a group of miscreants. Judicious use of a rifle spared the individual from being thrown off a cliff as the miscreants had threatened. I may not have had any legal liability had I failed to act, but I'm not sure I could have faced that individual's family in good conscience had I failed to act. Legal duty? Probably not. Moral duty? I think so.

This is not the legal forum, and I won't pretend to make a case for a legal duty. But I see it as a moral duty...

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Ah. Ok. Thanks.

Berger.Fan222 said:

I don't like the word sheepdog, and I will agree that in general one citizen should not try and be a self-appointed protector of other citizens they do not know.

But a man IS a proper protector of his family and household. A business owner IS a proper protector of his employees and customers in his place of business. A pastor/preacher IS a proper protector of his congregation in the house of worship he serves.

One need not be military or LEO to give due consideration to strategies, tactics, and equipment that may be useful in the protection and defense of others. But those others are more properly people in a defined relationship to you rather than strangers in public places.

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When people refer to themselves as sheepdogs that’s not their intent. What they mean is “ mall hero.”

There’s no such thing as a sheepdog.