barrett wrote: I'd be happy to donate. One bit of unaccomplished business I have is that PS is supposed to convince me that gun ownership is a good thing! But that is for another thread.
Drumroll please… gun ownership isn't a good thing; it is highly mixed, and individuals must determine for themselves whether it is a net benefit for them. I used to be really gung-ho about guns but I've mellowed a lot. After a couple of years of going through other hobbies, moving, and having kids, I feel like now my position is a lot less firm than it was before.
Now, this is a forum for libertarian-leaning PP owners, so I'm going to approach this predominately from an individual perspective, not whether or not my ownership of guns is bad for society at large. Lots of things I do may be bad for society. My use of a gasoline-powered motor vehicle and consumption of natural gas, for example, and my purchase of factory-farmed animal meat. The list goes on. No question. But those would be irrelevant to a discussion of the merits of personal car ownership, which furnace is best, or the health benefits of humanely-raised animal meat. Same with guns. I'm also going to assume that if you're asking the question at all, that shooting as a hobby doesn't have real appeal to you. So I won't talk about how much fun the hobby is.
Let's start: guns are a pain in the neck to own. They're dangerous weapons, and hold inherent interest for thieves and children, so you have to devise a way to secure them from these people while simultaneously leaving them accessible enough for use in an emergency. This turns out to be a surprisingly difficult task, because burglars can easily destroy a weak safe, while children have all the time in the world to try out all the combinations on the lock (especially popular Simplex locks, which allow fast access but only have about 1,000 possible combinations) or disable the lock on a cheap, poorly-designed safe. Storage of all the associated stuff is a pain, too. Ammo is heavy. Cleaning supplies are dangerous chemicals. Etc. Owning more than a few guns becomes a storage and security nightmare, especially if your guns require many different calibers, which means more ammo, different sets of cleaning tools, etc.
Guns are also expensive. Typically $400-1500 each after taxes and fees, and ammunition is a lot pricier than you might expect. $0.20 per round, and often more… often much more for large calibers and premium defense or hunting ammunition. So actually shooting them is expensive too. Same with going to the range. Picture $10 an hour or more, and you'll have to drive there, often 20-40 minutes each way since shooting ranges aren't exactly common and they're typically far away from population centers or zoned into the bad parts of town where you hopefully don't live (for underground ranges in urban areas). Each range trip can easily cost $100 or more counting gas, wear-and-tear on your car, ammo, and range fees. If you don't have a car, it's even more annoying, because many cities ban guns (even secured guns in locked cases) on public transit for some reason, and even if they don't, you'll be obviously traveling with a gun and and any low-lives riding with you may try to follow you when you get off and steal it. It's locked in a case, remember? You're not going to be able to use it to protect yourself against such an attack; you'd better be concealed-carrying another gun!
In many ways, the gun-free life is simpler and cheaper. You don't have these expenses or worries.
So why own a gun? Simple. If you feel that the advantages outweigh these drawbacks. What are the advantages? There's really only one: a gun offers you the best chance to save your life or the lives of people you care about (or who are under your protection) if you have one available when someone else wants to injure or kill you or others. Against a serious attack, martial arts, improvised weapons, small knives, or pepper spray are a joke. Only a gun has the power to instantly and reliably halt an imminent attack before it even begins or disable the attacker once it has started.
Obviously, one's risk of being the victim of violence is a highly personal determination. Some people worry a lot about physical violence and others don't at all. Some people live in "safe" neighborhoods and others don't. Some people have relatively risky lifestyles and other people are troglodytic turtles. And so on. But the fact remains: at some point in your life, someone might just try to hurt to kill you, or your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your friend who you're out having tea with. It can happen. It's not likely, but it's possible. Because it happens to people all the time. People who thought they weren't going to be targeted or become victims. People who see the best in others, people who don't think about danger and risks, people who didn't deserve it. If your number comes up, and you're without a firearm, you have a much, much higher chance of being dead meat than if you are well-armed. If you have a family, the odds go up; 4 people are 4 times as likely to have on of them become the victim of violent crime as a single person. How would you feel if a member of your family was victimized and you were unable to prevent it?
It's a real fat tail risk: unlikely, but devastating if it happens. And if you use the PP, you already know how dangerous un-prepared-for fat tail risks can be. Now it's true that hedging against them can be a pain. Physical gold ownership has many of the same problems as gun ownership, for example. And our asset allocation can be costlier and more complicated compared to a simple two-fund stock/bond portfolio. But it's worth it to us because we worry about those fat tail risks. It's for this very reason that I own firearms. A physical attack against myself, my family, or my friends (while in my company) may be exceptionally unlikely, but if it did happen, and I was helpless to stop it, I don't think I could forgive myself--if I survived in the first place.
My AR-15, if I'm really honest with myself, is the kind of thing that is only likely to be useful in a SHTF situation, but in that case, I could easily build an AR-15 pistol that's much smaller, more compact, easier to maneuver, and easier to secure, with 90% of the hitting power and range.