Rimu, I totally agree. We do, in fact, live in a very safe country:
[img]http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/ldah6rdp6ukvngoyqi1fcg.gif[img]
[img]https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic-page/13violentcrimeoffensefigure.gif[img]
Those are crazy, crazy low crime rates.
But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, for the exact reasons I outlined above. Data and facts simply aren't convincing to a gun owner in the USA. Their typical response will be something along the lines of "Yeah, well those graphs won't protect you when someone breaks into your home!".
They have a deeply embedded sense of being under threat, which is fear, and that cannot be addressed in a debate or via facts/evidence.
This is another great example of the same data saying different things to different people.
To the anti gun side it says "the world is safe, you don't need a gun!"
To the pro gun side it says "the world is safe even with guns, why do you want to take them away?"
As far as taking the high road of "data and facts won't convince them," you haven't given me any facts that tell us why the same thing that happened in Russia, China, Venezuela, huge swaths of Africa, and in 1939 in a huge part of Western Europe, can't happen in the United States. Societal collapse is damn near a constant in human history, as is normal citizens getting screwed by those in power.
This isn't me reading a book that talks about magic happening 2000 years ago. This is me listening to a Holocaust survivor in my history class describe his life as a 12 year old in a concentration camp. This is talking to friends' grandparents who lived through government upheavals in other countries, and now have a crazy hard time throwing anything away or saving money because of it. This is reading a forum thread that someone in their 40's wrote about their time in Russia 25 years ago. Hell, Venezuelans right now are dying because they're buying tainted food on the black market due to their government's crazy policies.
I'm not saying I think it's likely to happen, I really hope it doesn't, but to state that someone is "ignoring facts" by reading a history book doesn't seem right to me. Acting as if we're all just emotional silly people who haven't really thought it through and are ignoring some glaringly obvious fact you have is frankly, insulting. I hope nothing terrible happens, I generally live my life under the assumption nothing terrible will happen, but I don't think it's all that crazy to buy a gun or two just in case. I also keep a week or two worth of food and water around in case of a natural disaster.
In a corporate training I did a few years back for a manufacturing facility, we did a large segment on risk management. The probability of a risk had to be weighed against its severity. If something had a .01% chance of happening, but in that .01% someone was likely to be killed, we had to address the risk. On the flip side if a risk had a 1% chance of happening but the consequence was someone having to re-sign a sheet of paper, it might not be addressed. You have to look at the severity of the consequences along with the probability.
As far as defining fear, if making plans to avoid something bad means you're afraid of it, sure I'm afraid. I just think stretching out the definition makes the word a bit silly, but that's fine. I'm not afraid of car crashes when I drive home, at least not in any sense of what I consider fear, but I still put on a seat belt. If that's fear to you, then so be it. I'm actually going to shoot some guns today, should be a good time.