There are people who don't carry a gun and live.

[blues]

There's also the idea that being armed somehow attracts danger. I know people who believe this, but don't think that wearing a seatbelt increases the likelihood of a car accident, or knowing CPR increases the chances of a heart attack.

Or carrying a condom in your wallet...(sorry, it just brought back decades old memories.)

[LSP552]

Most people don’t know what they don’t know. Most people have no exposure to evil and just don’t think in those terms. They just aren’t comfortable with violence or the thought they could be a victim of it.

[PNWTO]

Most people don’t know what they don’t know. Most people have no exposure to evil and just don’t think in those terms. They just aren’t comfortable with violence or the thought they could be a victim of it.

Even worse when they have had exposure to evil and still practice complacency, e.g. I know about fourteen LEOs in one form or another and the only one who CCs off-duty is a game warden. The rest are staters or city personnel.

[LSP552]

Even worse when they have had exposure to evil and still practice complacency, e.g. I know about fourteen LEOs in one form or another and the only one who CCs off-duty is a game warden. The rest are staters or city personnel.

I’d certainly agree that most LE isn’t really comfortable with real violence either. It’s a case of thinking “it’s” never going to happen to me. “It” always happens to someone else.

[SeriousStudent]

An ex-sister-in-law did the Mexico to Canada hike last spring. Crossing over a few mountain chains she would buy a bear spray canister, but she was always in a hurry to ditch it when she perceived she was out of bear country as it made her "feel nervous." She was so attached to her preconceived reality she didn't want to accept the existence of a threat from a wild animal -much less another human. She hiked with friends at times and sometimes they would meet and hike with others. Other times she hiked solo.

She's far, far from being an unintelligent woman. Very naive (from my viewpoint) and very much an extremely liberal child of the late 60's. I told her that I would have loved to do the hike with her and that it would have been been a great excuse to have picked up a nice lightweight big-bore revolver.

She called me a "sissy."

I completely disagree. Anyone that shoots a lightweight big-bore revolver is not a sissy.

[Darth_Uno]

Most people don’t know what they don’t know. Most people have no exposure to evil and just don’t think in those terms. They just aren’t comfortable with violence or the thought they could be a victim of it.

I've said before, that your average whitebread middle class minivan driving family can very likely go their entire lives without owning or shooting a gun and be none the worse for it. And really...they know this. Which isn't so bad by itself, but it leads to the "I don't need a gun so why should you" mindset. If I never owned a gun, my life wouldn't be much different.

The fact that you're pretty safe damn near anywhere really speaks to the success of the American system; short of "mass shooting" (I've come to despise that phrase) statistical anomalies, if you don't live in the hood you're really not likely to be a victim of gun violence.

[Cypher]

My carrying a gun doesn't change the threat level at all. All carrying a gun does is better enable me to meet the threat that's already there.

I don't leave my home unarmed but I can't say that it changes my behavior at all. I don't "push the boundaries" because I'm carrying a gun. I still try to live by the rule of stupids.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I'm just paraphrasing @misanthropist here (I think, maybe I'm just making shit up), but for me, I get training and carry a gun not to live a safer life than the average person, but to be able to push the boundaries more and come out about as safe as the average person. I don't want to have training and (slightly better) understanding the realities of violence be turned into a cage, but as a source of freedom.

Pretty sure he said it way more eloquently, though.

I don't think I've ever put it that succinctly and I would argue that the eloquence heavily favours you in this instance but I will continue the early thread riffing from you and Sidheshooter: the level of training I have allows me to go more stupid places and do more stupid things and stumble out the other side and that's exactly how I like it.

I went through a phase of serious risk avoidance...I got sick of it. I like seeing punk bands in dirty bars where fistfights break out. Yeah, I might get suckerpunched and killed, conceivably. But so far my experience is that I'm a much harder than average target and as a result I get to do stuff like ride a motorcycle across ten states and sleep in the ditch and fend off a bike-jacking in Atlanta and just shrug it off and go to a bar. Maybe I'll pay for it hard one day, but I don't think I can do otherwise. If I really wanted to prolong my life, statistically speaking I'd probably stop spending all my time on bikes in heavy traffic and boats in heavy weather. I don't, and sometimes I drive around with no seatbelt on, too. It's a good example of my headspace in a way: active accident avoidance is something you can do better if you're a more skilled driver. By being better at that aspect of driving, there's less risk if I don't feel like wearing a seatbelt for whatever dumb reason. By training my defensive skillset, I can increase my chances of survival to maybe equal a stay-at-home dad, while getting to live the lifestyle of someone who still plays in a rock band from time to time.

At any rate, dumb luck is a big part of life. I don't feel too bad for relying on it sometimes.

[fixer]

I found a site that has estimates of crime rate for different towns.
The town I live in has an estimated probability of violent crime of 1/2500. The town 25 minutes away is 1/180. Detroit is 1/170 (if memory serves).
The only recent time I've needed to be armed was in my town whose apparent crime rate was orders of magnitude lower than other towns nearby. This echoes Mr Given's "Ain't no Mayberrys anymore" lesson.

The times I've gone un-armed due to laziness or forced by circumstance (traveling for business) my anxiety was notably worse off.

[psalms144.1]

Even worse when they have had exposure to evil and still practice complacency, e.g. I know about fourteen LEOs in one form or another and the only one who CCs off-duty is a game warden. The rest are staters or city personnel.

A lot of this is local culturally influenced as well. I was at dinner with two of my Uncles, both retired Detectives from the local PD, and they were MORTIFIED that I was carrying a gun off duty. But, it's NYistan, where all guns are viewed as evil by nearly everyone...