Brian Pfleuger
Moderator Emeritus
Yes you do. Everybody does. When you pull up to a stop sign and there's a car coming, how do you decide to go or wait?
It's the "chances" of getting hit by the car. If the cars is 500 yards away, your odds are darn near zero, so you pull out "without thinking about it", except you most certainly did think about it, it's just nearly instant, almost sub-conscious. Now, as that car gets closer, at some distance, you will eventually decide that you shouldn't pull out. Why? Because the "chances" of getting hit are too high. As the car approaches, the odds climb, 1%-2%-5%-20%, until eventually the car is in such a place that it could not maneuver or stop before hitting you. The odds are now 100%. Your brain automatically inputs any number of "fudge factors", you don't know if the driver is paying attention or half asleep, a 16 year old on their first lone drive or Jeff Gordon. So you don't "know" the odds, as in "the odds are now 20.38% that I'll be safe." but you most certainly do "know" the odds, you know when it's safe and when it's probably not safe.
We all do this every day, all day, pretty well non-stop. To deny it is to deny reality.
It applies equally to what you choose to carry. If you know nothing about crime, nothing about where you are, nothing about history, then you are operating on an entirely made up set of odds. You may think your safe when your not, and place yourself in real danger as a result, or you make think there's a real chance that you need to go through life with a kevlar helmet and flack jacket, looking like an idiot because your made up "chances" have you believing that you might need such things.
There is a truth somewhere in between.
We can simply ignore the odds entirely and carry whatever the heck we fancy, and that's all well and good, go right ahead, but we could be severely over burdening ourselves, and being way down the road of "diminishing returns". That's what the whole discussion is about, really, how far down that road of diminishing returns will you go?
Do nothing and be oblivious: prepared for 95% of every day life.
Pay attention and stay out of bad places: prepared for 99% of every day life
Pay attention, out of bad places, away from bad people: 99.5%
2 and 3 and carry pepper spray: 99.9%
2,3 and carry a gun: 99.99%
2,3,4 and carry reloads or a BUG, whatever: 99.999%
We could also choose to ignore or never learn the odds and be on the "oblivious" side of the argument. Believing that bad things don't happen to us, the police will protect us, guns are "scary", whatever. Then we could do stupid things like be in neighborhoods we shouldn't be in, hanging with people we shouldn't be with, doing things we shouldn't do... whatever, it's a long list of dangers we could put ourselves in.
We all use "odds". It's beneficial to have the right set.
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