[BryanB55]

For me? Not often. But home invasions are not uncommon throughout the world. I like to be prepared for events that may not happen everyday but have a high potential to be deadly if they do happen. Same reason you probably have a fire extinguisher in your house. How often does your house catch fire?

[ceejayoz]

Having a fire extinguisher in my house doesn't increase my family members' chances of dying in a homicide or suicide. Having a gun does. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

Given machete-bearing lunatics are far less likely than depressed teenagers, perhaps your cost/benefit analysis on being prepared is lacking a few variables.

[BryanB55]

That's a pretty week study. Results indicated that gun ownership had a weak (odds ratio = 1.36) and unstable relationship with homicidal behavior: http://www.guncite.com/Kleck-Hogan.html

And the CDC disagrees with that assessment. Even as gun ownership is on the rise [1], and more people than ever are carrying concealed firearms, the number of people (raw number, mind you) accidentally killed with firearms each year continues to drop. The accident rate shows an even more marked decline. [2]

There are, according to the CDC, 308 million people in the United States. That’s 308,745,538. Of those 308 million people, only 600 were accidentally killed with a firearm. That’s a 0.000194% chance that you will be accidentally killed with a gun in any given year. According to the National Safety Council, over 12,000 people die every year simply by falling down.

But, our difference in opinions doesn't really matter here so, good luck to you. There are sheep, there are wolves and there are sheep dogs.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732368920457... [2] http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95379

[ceejayoz]

> And the CDC disagrees with that assessment.

We're talking about the organization that was forbidden from spending money on firearms injury research, right?

> That’s 308,745,538. Of those 308 million people, only 600 were accidentally killed with a firearm.

Ah, clever. Take a discussion of homicide/suicide and start presenting stats on accidental deaths as if it were at all relevant.

To return to the actual point, if you have a gun in the house, it's far more likely to be used by your kid to kill themselves as you are to be confronted by a machete wielding lunatic. On a non-anedoctal level, the stats just don't work.

[aptwebapps]

Your second link has nothing to do with accidental deaths, but rather with violent crime. Heck, if violent crime is dropping, that's an argument against the necessity of gun ownership. Did you paste the wrong url?

Also, this:

> There are sheep, there are wolves and there are sheep dogs.

is just fatuous.