Thanks, Mike. Glad to hear you find the site helpful.
My question is, is it wrong to encourage the 'peace of mind' that comes from having a gun, even when theres no logical danger? She's afraid of the storm, not that someone really is coming in the window. I want her to feel empowered but is this a bad reason?
To address this more specifically, recently I've been reading a lot of books about how to market a beginning business. One of those books, titled
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, talks a bit about the principle of consistency. It seems that once people have made a decision -- whatever the decision might be, whether it's to buy a product or bet money on a horse or volunteer at the local soup kitchen -- they tend to find
other (often more compelling) reasons to support that choice. And they tend to stay with the choice they made and continue to act consistently with that decision even if you take away the original reason they had for choosing the way they did.*
What I'm getting at is something like this: no, it doesn't make any sense to purchase a firearm and learn how to use it simply because you're afraid of storm noises.
But. Once she's made that decision to have a gun in her home, she'll almost certainly find
other and
better reasons she should be prepared to protect herself if she needs to. Even though later on she'll almost certainly agree that her original reason made no sense, she can continue to move forward with those better reasons.
Because people tend to act consistently with decisions they've made in the past and with the self image they currently hold, she probably will not get rid of the gun when she decides that the first reason she had for buying it was a bad one. Instead, she'll probably just find a good reason to keep the gun, and she'll keep going on that path.
So while I wouldn't necessarily encourage the "illogical" reason she currently has, I would not argue against it either. I would just present other, more reasonable (and thus more durable) reasons she might want to be able to protect herself. She's a smart person and will manage the rest on her own.
pax
* This is why shady "bait and switch" tactics work -- and because it's such a strong principle, it's also why such tactics are illegal and immoral and also probably fattening.