Here's a condensed version of a conversation my wife and I had a while ago. It's a good way to use a recent, important statistic to illustrate the place that guns should and could have in our society.
Essentially, I asked my wife an innocent hypothetical question:
Honey, I want to get a pool. Now I know you have absolutely no interest in swimming, but I have three reasons for wanting this pool: first, I just happen to think that swimmers are just really cool. Not a great reason, but it's a reason. Second, I really enjoy swimming; it's a fun hobby and swimming clears my head and therefore helps me refocus on other, more important things. Third, even though I would work out anyway, I like swimming a little bit more than, say, biking or jogging, so it would slightly improve my health. Oh, and let's say (for the sake of the question) that the pool costs only $1,000 to install. After that, it'll cost $200-$350 per year to keep it up.
She said yes, so long as we could fit it in the budget. So I said:
Honey, I don't want a pool. I want a gun. Now I know you have absolutely no interest in shooting (although you should), but I have three reasons for wanting a gun: first, I think it's really cool. Not a great reason, but it's a reason. Second, I really enjoy shooting; it's a fun hobby and shooting helps me refocus on other, more important things. Third, even though I try to keep us safe every way I can, owning and carrying a gun has the potential to keep us just a little bit safer. It'll cost about $1000 for everything (holster, safe, cleaning kit, etc.) and around $200-$350 per year in ammo and upkeep.
Oh yeah, there's one more thing: having a gun in the house is 100 TIMES SAFER THAN HAVING A POOL IN THE BACK YARD. (Freakonomics, Levitt, Dubner, 2005).
Cute, no? ;0)
