I met one heck of a guy the other day. A bunch of us were hanging out in a group and like any great hang-sesh, politics came up. I don’t generally like to debate politics with people because it never ends up going anywhere. However, I sensed, at least somewhat correctly, that this was a good crowd to at least joke about Donald Trump with.
We had a few laughs and this guy blurted out that he’ll do what he always does, abstain from voting in the presidential elections. Now, I’m fine with that. In fact, I can give the guy a little credit for being able to acknowledge that he’s too uneducated about politics to vote (and I don’t mean that facetiously). His rationale was that he wasn’t voting because his life will be the same either way. Admittedly, it’s debatable whether one person’s vote really counts in the electoral college for a non-key state but, “life will be the same either way,” is more of a stretch.
So anyways, he’s not a political guy. We all moved on, the conversations splintered, I’m no longer talking to him. Now I’m on to talking to a similarly minded person about owning a hand gun for warding off potential home invaders. I’m not necessarily anti-gun, but I am pro-common sense and I said something like, “You’re more likely to shoot yourself than stop an intruder,” which is mostly true (more on that in a second). From fifteen feet away I heard this guy yell, “That’s so dumb, you’re wrong,” which I wasn’t.
I found it disturbing how many results came up when I later Googled, “hand gun more likely to kill self than stop intruder.” I won’t get into the numbers or examples here (please see Google for that) but as Politico notes, “gun owners are far more likely to end up…accidentally shooting an innocent person or seeing their weapons harm a family member, than be heroes warding off criminals.” Which is only slightly semantically off from killing yourself (and might even be worse for those able to feel guilt and remorse).
The guy in question also yelled something about how he owns a hand gun and hasn’t shot himself (yet). My response was to ask him how many home invasions he had stopped. He didn’t have an answer for that.
photo credit: _MG_7310 via photopin, cropped by Matt Aromando (license)
