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A good percentage of the time a weapon used by a homeowner during a home invasion is used against them.

Get out of the house and let the authorities deal with it. Your stuff isn't worth your life or your family's continued safety.

Remember that most burglars aren't as shocked or scared as you are during a burglary. It's a routine for them. Their attention is focused on what to do if someone in the house notices.

If you brandish a weapon you're dealing with someone who is more alert and aware of the situation than you are and has no intention of dying.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a...

[stickfigure]

A good percentage of the time a weapon used by a homeowner during a home invasion is used against them.

This quasi-statistic (which I will take at face value), while interesting from a sociological perspective, does not actually inform individual decisionmaking. It's a thinly veiled way of saying to someone "you can't be trusted to handle a gun/knife/whatever properly" - which, even if true for the majority of humans, is an incredibly offensive and patronizing thing to say to someone. And may just get you punched in the face, which (if it so happens) suggests that you were probably wrong about the individual in question.

[Qwertious]

That's quite an interesting comment on the tone of the argument you're responding to(http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), but doesn't actually refute it.

People make mistakes, people are fallible, the /r/talesfromtechsupport subreddit goes to show that quite well. Despite this, you obviously don't want these people to die, and if not having a gun reduces the chance of a gun being turned on them, they may well be better without it.

Having a gun in the scenario inherently raises the stakes to lethal, after all.

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You're right, I assumed that they were able to handle hearing words in a civilized manner.

Doesn't sound like they're capable of controlling themselves around a deadly weapon, or is that a bad assumption to make as well?

[4ydx]

I fail to see how being punched in the face suggests anything other than that the perp is a maladjusted adult.

[tripzilch]

Same goes for speed limits.

[ende]

How about you decide what's best for yourself and I'll decide what's best for me.

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Are you a 5' 5" woman who was handed a gun to protect herself against someone likely to over power them?

Or are you someone who was personally offended by the generalization that they might be in the group of people, considered Normal Humans, who don't handle life-threatening situations like a person in the special forces?

[67726e]

Or maybe you just need to climb off down your high horse. You don't know better than any other person throwing their opinion out in this thread. I'm almost sad that I commented given how this has gone to shit and the pretense of an intelligent conversation is gone...

Fact is, as an American, particularly one who lives in a southern state where a gun can (legally) be purchased for cash in a grocery store parking lot with no record, if someone were to break into my house, there is a non-trivial chance that were someone to break into my home they would be armed. Given that I'm single and live by myself, were someone to break in all I would have to do is take a defensive position in some room, phone the police, and announce to the intruder that police are on their way and that I am armed. Now what if I had a wife and kids? That changes the dynamic. What do you plan on doing in that case? Running through a house with a potentially armed intruder while you are not armed? Truth be told, there aren't a lot of wide open spaces in a house and as a 6'3", 230lb male could probably overpower a single intruder. What if you have more than one? I'm a boy scout at heart. Be Prepared.

How likely is all of this? Dunno, my brother has suffered an armed home invasion. My neighbor was luckily not home when his was broken into. A coworker almost got carjacked last month, and him being armed saved his ass. Hell, I once narrowly missed getting into a car accident and when I pulled over to make sure the other car that ran off the road was fine, I nearly got jumped by a couple guys that had a couple inches and quite a few pounds of muscle on me. I'd rather not get the shit beat out of me because someone got some mud on their Mercedes. Draw a line in the sand, if they cross it they fucked up. Hell, just last week my buddy got robbed by 3 punk teenagers when he got out of his car at his girlfriend's apartment complex.

I don't think owning a firearm makes me "deal with things like I'm in the special forces", but maybe I'm just an outlier. Truth be told, I know folks that are wholesome, responsible individuals who want protection, and I know folks who illegally own firearms and don't know the first thing about how to properly handle a firearm. It's a mixed bag of nuts and only reinforces the notion that damn near anyone who wants a gun will have one. I certainly wish I lived in a Western European country (for more reasons than a little more sanity about firearms... if only my mother had attained US-German dual citizenship as she very well could have, oh well) and this wasn't as much of a thing, but I don't and I doubt I'll have much luck getting over there in the near future, so I've got to play the hand I've been dealt. Now as for assuming us firearms owners are a bunch of knuckle dragging, Dirty Harry wannabes, please reconsider your stereotype. The large majority of folks I know down here are responsible folk.