Evan Thomas
Inactive
Thanks for making this point. I've thought about this quite a bit, and I do think that for many people, the interest in guns is primary, and a focus on self-defense can be a good way to justify the time and money they put into it.TailGator said:
The following is lifted from something I wrote a while ago, in one of those threads on how much "stuff" a person needs to carry... as my opinion hasn't changed, I'll just repost it here:
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For anyone who isn't required to carry a gun on the job [ETA: or facing a known, specific threat], having an interest in guns is a hobby, or a lifestyle choice, if you will. Some people are interested in large-caliber rifles and big game hunting, some people in shotguns and upland game hunting, and some are interested in handguns and self-defense (and shotguns and SD, etc., etc. ). Some people just like to have guns, whether or not they call it "collecting," and don't actually shoot them all that much. Some people are interested in a combination of those things, or some other aspect of the sport. All of these are fine.
Some folks have a very high level of interest in self-defense: they do a lot of research and spend a lot of money on the best possible tools and training, they travel most weekends to attend workshops or participate in defensive shooting competitions. They do all this because they like it. They enjoy it. It's fun.
And that's great. But they also need to justify the time and money they spend on what is basically a leisure activity. This is especially true in our rather puritanical culture, in which the whole idea of leisure, of doing things just because we enjoy them, is still morally suspect.
Believing that it's important to be prepared is a great rationale, not least because it happens to be true.
If you're spending a lot of time and money on self-defense, it's useful to believe that you're doing so because it's necessary in order to protect you and yours from real danger. But the odds that the average person will ever need a firearm are rather low, and the chances of being present at a riot, rampage shooting, or other event involving multiple shots or several assailants are... well, vanishingly small.
So there's a lot of potential for cognitive dissonance here: why spend so much time and money preparing for something so unlikely?
People resolve this in a couple of ways: some resolve it by perceiving more risk than there actually is, which is easy when we live in a media culture in which fear sells, and we're deluged with information about these statistically unlikely events whenever they do occur. For these people, a high level of perceived risk allows them to justify what they're doing.
Other people... assess the risk more accurately, but put more emphasis on the consequences of not being prepared for any eventuality: they know this is life-and-death stuff, so the time and money they spend is a good investment, and they like the feeling of preparedness that comes with carrying a gun, spare magazines, a backup, a knife or two, and a flashlight.
For a great many other gun owners, for whom self-defense isn't a primary interest, it still makes sense to carry a gun for protection, and/or keep one or two ready for home defense. They're entirely happy just to carry a five-shot revolver, which they know they'll probably never need. They're just not that into it, and that's fine.
