I’ve never had a fire in my kitchen, but I still keep a fire extinguisher. I’ve never had cancer, but I still have medical insurance.
The marginal cost of carrying a gun is basically zero. If I ever do find myself in a situation where I need it, I’ll be glad to have it. And even if I don’t, the fact that random anonymous law-abiding citizens have guns is itself a crime deterrent.
No, it isn't. The stats for gun deaths in the US make this absolutely, unambiguously clear, far beyond the point where there's any realistic case for debate about it.
Widespread fire extinguisher use dramatically lowers the odds of you dying in a fire.
Widespread gun use - not just the presence of guns as an option, but the assumption that guns can be used on the street - dramatically increases the odds of you dying because of someone else's gun.
Proponents always seem to reduce this to an imaginary heroic encounter where Random Shooter is stopped by Heroic Armed Citizens.
That's almost never how it works in practice on the street. It's far more likely that Random Citizen is shot before they can even get their weapon out. And even if bystanders are armed they either won't have time to do anything to prevent a shooting, or they won't risk trying to shoot one of two people who are fairly close together at some range, or they'll simply decide it's not their problem and the most they'll do is call the police after it's over.
At this point someone usually says "But this one time..." And it's true there are exceptions.
But they don't change the statistics, which are completely clear - more gun use means more random gun deaths, partly because concealed guns really aren't particularly useful against attackers who already have their weapons out.
You have a far better chance of survival if you learn some distraction and confusion techniques and/or fast self-defence moves than by trying to shoot someone who is pointing a gun at you at close range.
There's a correlation because people who live in dangerous places tend to carry guns. But that's not causation--there's no reason to suspect that carrying a gun increases my chances of being killed by a gun.
Huh? Surely carrying a gun somewhere where there are no other guns immensely increased the chance that you’ll be killed by a gun, since the number of guns in the vicinity went from zero to one.
It does, yes. The majority of firearm deaths in the US are suicides, and the majority of suicides are committed with a firearm. The suicide rate is several times higher among men who own guns or regularly handle guns than it is among men who do not. It's clear that gun ownership has a high propensity to convert a survivable mental health crisis into a suicide. A US adult (but especially a man) who owns a gun is far more likely over their lifetime to use the gun on themself than they are to use it to defend themself.
Yes, I suppose it necessarily does, although I was referring more to the chance that in a struggle (perhaps an attempted robbery) your gun accidentally or intentionally discharges.
Kitchen fires are very common, as is cancer (not to mention the slew of other issues that require medical attention). Being in a situation where having a concealed gun in public will help anything is not. You haven't addressed any part of the argument here...
edit: also, there is no conclusive evidence at all to support your last statement [1].
The marginal cost of carrying a gun is basically zero. If I ever do find myself in a situation where I need it, I’ll be glad to have it. And even if I don’t, the fact that random anonymous law-abiding citizens have guns is itself a crime deterrent.