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Is that the advice you'd give to a 5'5" woman who lives alone? "When the attacker gets in your house, grab a kitchen knife"? 'Cause I'd say, grab a shotgun and

Is that the advice you'd give to a 5'5" woman who lives alone? "When the attacker gets in your house, grab a kitchen knife"? 'Cause I'd say, grab a shotgun and shoot in their general direction. Good for you that as a brave man called Rory it's easy to get rid of invaders with a kitchen knife. You'll probably have the same results with a fake knife.

rorykoehler 11y ago
If I was a 5'5" woman I would get out of the house and call the cops. Still preferable to killing someone. This comes to mind (particularly the part about "If he is in superior strength"): "If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected." - Sun Tzu
- alphapapa 11y ago
  What if the invader is blocking the door? What if the invader is carrying a baseball bat? What if he wants to rape the woman? What if he takes a cut from the knife, then knocks out the woman, rapes her, and murders her? "Preferable"? Is the invader killing the woman preferable to the woman killing the invader? It's amazing how shortsighted you are! "Just do this" or "just do that." Talk to any kind of instructor in self defense or martial arts, and they will tell you to not get into a knife fight, or you will get cut. All of your ideas rely on the invader being rational and more interested in his own well-being than anything else. Yet the fact that he's a home invader shows that is not the case. Firearms are equalizers. They make the 5'2" woman just as dangerous as the 6'+ 200+ lb. man. They allow her to defend herself from beyond the invader's reach. They make noise to draw attention to the fact that something bad is happening. Rational people realize that they have nothing to fear from law-abiding gun owners who only want to be prepared to protect their loved ones from evil people. And rational people realize that evil people are not going away anytime soon. Rational people realize that there are plenty of irrational people who may do them harm, and that the only effective method of self-defense is to have a firearm and know how to use it.
task_queue 11y ago
A good percentage of the time a weapon used by a homeowner during a home invasion is used against them. Get out of the house and let the authorities deal with it. Your stuff isn't worth your life or your family's continued safety. Remember that most burglars aren't as shocked or scared as you are during a burglary. It's a routine for them. Their attention is focused on what to do if someone in the house notices. If you brandish a weapon you're dealing with someone who is more alert and aware of the situation than you are and has no intention of dying. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a-gun-in-the-house-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/284022/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a...
- stickfigure 11y ago
  A good percentage of the time a weapon used by a homeowner during a home invasion is used against them. This quasi-statistic (which I will take at face value), while interesting from a sociological perspective, does not actually inform individual decisionmaking. It's a thinly veiled way of saying to someone "you can't be trusted to handle a gun/knife/whatever properly" - which, even if true for the majority of humans, is an incredibly offensive and patronizing thing to say to someone. And may just get you punched in the face, which (if it so happens) suggests that you were probably wrong about the individual in question.
  - task_queue 11y ago
    You're right, I assumed that they were able to handle hearing words in a civilized manner. Doesn't sound like they're capable of controlling themselves around a deadly weapon, or is that a bad assumption to make as well?
  - Qwertious 11y ago
    That's quite an interesting comment on the tone of the argument you're responding to(http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), but doesn't actually refute it. People make mistakes, people are fallible, the /r/talesfromtechsupport subreddit goes to show that quite well. Despite this, you obviously don't want these people to die, and if not having a gun reduces the chance of a gun being turned on them, they may well be better without it. Having a gun in the scenario inherently raises the stakes to lethal, after all.
ux-app 11y ago
> 'Cause I'd say, grab a shotgun and shoot in their general direction. This is terrible advice. The chance that you are the victim of a serial killer is so vanishingly small as to be not worth considering. Therefore if you have an intruder in your home, they are almost certainly after your property. I would hope that any moral human being would not value property over a human being's life. Therefore the best outcome which preserves human life is to simply let the intruder take your property and leave. They're almost certainly in a hurry to do so. Involving a firearm escalates the situation unnecessarily and raises your own chances of death from very very unlikely to probably 50/50 (stat pulled from my butt). If, on the other hand, you do believe that lethal force is justified to protect property then you have a miss aligned moral compass.
- nicksardo 11y ago
  When a stranger is in my home at 3am while my spouse and two kids are upstairs sleeping, I won't risk judging what he/she will or will not do. Even if I were alone, I wouldn't take that chance. My intention is not to preserve "human life" but the lives of my family and myself.
  - ux-app 11y ago
    > My intention is not to preserve "human life" but the lives of my family and myself. The irony of course is that (statistically speaking) you would be vastly lowering you and your family's chances of surviving the event. The chance that the intruder is there to murder you is ridiculously minuscule. It's so small that the people that do indiscriminately enter homes to murder get special nicknames like "Zodiac Killer" and Hollywood makes films about them. Worrying about this type of intruder is irrational. Pulling a gun turns what is almost certainly a routine burglary into a life and death situation.
    - nicksardo 11y ago
      First, your statistics are moot. As I just said, a statistic is still a risk. A risk I will not take when it comes to family. You play it your way; I'll play it mine.

rorykoehler 11y ago

If I was a 5'5" woman I would get out of the house and call the cops. Still preferable to killing someone. This comes to mind (particularly the part about "If he is in superior strength"): "If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected." - Sun Tzu

alphapapa 11y ago
What if the invader is blocking the door? What if the invader is carrying a baseball bat? What if he wants to rape the woman? What if he takes a cut from the knife, then knocks out the woman, rapes her, and murders her? "Preferable"? Is the invader killing the woman preferable to the woman killing the invader? It's amazing how shortsighted you are! "Just do this" or "just do that." Talk to any kind of instructor in self defense or martial arts, and they will tell you to not get into a knife fight, or you will get cut. All of your ideas rely on the invader being rational and more interested in his own well-being than anything else. Yet the fact that he's a home invader shows that is not the case. Firearms are equalizers. They make the 5'2" woman just as dangerous as the 6'+ 200+ lb. man. They allow her to defend herself from beyond the invader's reach. They make noise to draw attention to the fact that something bad is happening. Rational people realize that they have nothing to fear from law-abiding gun owners who only want to be prepared to protect their loved ones from evil people. And rational people realize that evil people are not going away anytime soon. Rational people realize that there are plenty of irrational people who may do them harm, and that the only effective method of self-defense is to have a firearm and know how to use it.

task_queue 11y ago

A good percentage of the time a weapon used by a homeowner during a home invasion is used against them. Get out of the house and let the authorities deal with it. Your stuff isn't worth your life or your family's continued safety. Remember that most burglars aren't as shocked or scared as you are during a burglary. It's a routine for them. Their attention is focused on what to do if someone in the house notices. If you brandish a weapon you're dealing with someone who is more alert and aware of the situation than you are and has no intention of dying. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a-gun-in-the-house-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/284022/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a...

stickfigure 11y ago
A good percentage of the time a weapon used by a homeowner during a home invasion is used against them. This quasi-statistic (which I will take at face value), while interesting from a sociological perspective, does not actually inform individual decisionmaking. It's a thinly veiled way of saying to someone "you can't be trusted to handle a gun/knife/whatever properly" - which, even if true for the majority of humans, is an incredibly offensive and patronizing thing to say to someone. And may just get you punched in the face, which (if it so happens) suggests that you were probably wrong about the individual in question.
- task_queue 11y ago
  You're right, I assumed that they were able to handle hearing words in a civilized manner. Doesn't sound like they're capable of controlling themselves around a deadly weapon, or is that a bad assumption to make as well?
- Qwertious 11y ago
  That's quite an interesting comment on the tone of the argument you're responding to(http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), but doesn't actually refute it. People make mistakes, people are fallible, the /r/talesfromtechsupport subreddit goes to show that quite well. Despite this, you obviously don't want these people to die, and if not having a gun reduces the chance of a gun being turned on them, they may well be better without it. Having a gun in the scenario inherently raises the stakes to lethal, after all.

ux-app 11y ago

> 'Cause I'd say, grab a shotgun and shoot in their general direction. This is terrible advice. The chance that you are the victim of a serial killer is so vanishingly small as to be not worth considering. Therefore if you have an intruder in your home, they are almost certainly after your property. I would hope that any moral human being would not value property over a human being's life. Therefore the best outcome which preserves human life is to simply let the intruder take your property and leave. They're almost certainly in a hurry to do so. Involving a firearm escalates the situation unnecessarily and raises your own chances of death from very very unlikely to probably 50/50 (stat pulled from my butt). If, on the other hand, you do believe that lethal force is justified to protect property then you have a miss aligned moral compass.

nicksardo 11y ago
When a stranger is in my home at 3am while my spouse and two kids are upstairs sleeping, I won't risk judging what he/she will or will not do. Even if I were alone, I wouldn't take that chance. My intention is not to preserve "human life" but the lives of my family and myself.
- ux-app 11y ago
  > My intention is not to preserve "human life" but the lives of my family and myself. The irony of course is that (statistically speaking) you would be vastly lowering you and your family's chances of surviving the event. The chance that the intruder is there to murder you is ridiculously minuscule. It's so small that the people that do indiscriminately enter homes to murder get special nicknames like "Zodiac Killer" and Hollywood makes films about them. Worrying about this type of intruder is irrational. Pulling a gun turns what is almost certainly a routine burglary into a life and death situation.
  - nicksardo 11y ago
    First, your statistics are moot. As I just said, a statistic is still a risk. A risk I will not take when it comes to family. You play it your way; I'll play it mine.