My gf and I put up a sheet metal roof over our deck. Any roof would keep the sun off, but for those rare times when we have a good rain nothing beats the sound of it hitting on a sheet metal roof. I can sit out there for hours when it rains.

Good point. Common sense is pretty persuasive when backed with self confidence.

I am totally not qualified to comment on acting skills. So if I answered I'd have to admit that my answer was based pretty much on "blondes or brunettes?" and I don't have a preference there either.

Tie game, on to the after party.

@bmanva:

LOL...When I need a diagnosis delivered by meme I know who to call. Could you send me your address in case I ever need a gun cache?

And here we reach the crux of the matter. All your clever little memes, all your browbeating, this is what it's all about. The feeling of control. This is why linking you to statistics we both know are out there and that you have undoubtedly seen and ignored before is pointless. This is why the common sense that says that the chances of a fatal gun accident in my house are ZERO while you have made them non zero in yours makes no difference. Because what is really at stake here is your feeling of control. That's what makes you want a gun, and it's what makes you need agreement that you do NEED a gun. And it's what irks you about me knowing that I don't need one. In a delicious bit of irony I actually accept that YOU do need one, but we'll get to that later. First, let's take a look at what your gun is doing "for" me...and everyone else.

I'm sure you're familiar with random mass shootings. A McDonalds in San Diego. A Theater in Colorado. An elementary school in Sandy Hook. No doubt you have commented on these events. Probably fed your feelings of control with the standard chestnuts about how "if someone like me had been there with a gun things would have been better." Thing is that someone like you WAS there. One reason I would never push you to agree with me is that I don't want to give you the final push. Before those shooters got the final push, the one that convinced them that their only path remaining to feeling in control was killing people, they were satisfied with winning arguments, just like you. Now, when they got that final push they would have killed with a knife, or a bat, but they were gun owners. Just like you. That's one thing your guns do for me. They give you that feeling of control without anyone having to be killed, and I'm glad for it.

Now let's look at what they do for a certain young mother at WalMart. Unlike me she listened to the arguments and smiled at the memes from people just like you, and it built in her a paranoia and a feeling of lost control that led her to believe she could only "feel safe" at the WalMart if she had a gun. She was looking at the shelves, as a shopper is likely to do. Her toddler in the cart was exploring her purse, as a toddler is likely to do. She's dead in an accidental gun death. You will rightly dismiss this as a lightning strike type of event. A one in a million that doesn't invalidate your arguments at all. I agree with you. So let's get back to discussing the Arizona kid who shot a home invader a few years back...oh, wait, now there's this Oklahoma case that's more current so you've moved on to using it as the proof that these things are happening to ordinary folk every day. Okay then. Enough about what your guns are doing for the rest of us.

On to where you have my complete agreement. Even though I don't need to carry a gun when I go to the kitchen for a bag of chips, I agree that you do. Because there is this guy in Oklahoma, and it did work for him. Unlike me, he lived in a targeted house. His local underground had identified his house as "a place with a lot of cash." I don't know why. Maybe he was dealing dope. Maybe he was a devoted follower of Alex Jones and had tried to convince his friends and neighbors that banks are part of the big space lizard conspiracy and the only safe place for money is a well guarded mattress. How his house became a target doesn't matter, what matters is that it was.

And here's the delicious irony. No doubt yours is too. See, that need to control, win arguments, get agreement; it means that I'm not likely to be the only person you've tried to browbeat. I'm most likely not the only person who knows you keep guns. And even though I neither know nor care where you live some of those people do. And in YOUR local underworld even though your house probably isn't known as "a place for cash" it is almost certainly known as a gun cache, which is the next best thing as targets go.

So carry on man! Grab your gun and go get yourself a bag of chips. I'm convinced that YOU need your guns, and I wish you all the best.

@Solaryellow:

Funny thing about your argument...it is predicated on me being wrong. That's fine...in this Oklahoma guy's one in a million situation I would be wrong. But that doesn't change the realities for the far greater number of people in that million where I'm right.

@bmanva: Do you really need evidence that accidental in home shootings are more likely to occur in homes where there is a gun? Do you need evidence that this chance is increased where the gun is kept "ready to hand"?

By the way, nice misrepresentation with the "hundreds of thousands of times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than win the lottery." First off, when dealing with negligible quantities relative magnitude is not really important. Secondly, if you compare winning the lottery to being a victim of violent crime in your home you'll get a much different result.

You'll also get a much different result if you differentiate between victims who are not involved with any illicit business or criminal activity themselves. The guy in this case had two potentially effective options for reducing the chances of being a victim of violent crime in his home. He chose keeping a loaded AR-15 ready to hand, which worked out better for him than it has in other cases. The "don't have the word spreading through the underground that you keep a lot of cash in the house" option is usually more effective and carries less risk. I generally recommend it.

By the way, I don't love memes as arguments. I consider them a refuge for the otherwise incapable. Be better than that.

@bmanva said:

@timsup2nothin said:

Quick points:

The law in Oklahoma is similar to laws just about everywhere...if you are committing a felony and someone dies you can usually expect to be charged with murder.

No, things like this don't "happen every day." The odds in favor of nothing like this EVER happening to you or your home remain almost certain.

It seems highly unlikely that three armed young men dressed like ninjas were there to commit a burglary. Which suggests that the young man who "just happened" to be in the kitchen at the time carrying a rifle might have a pretty good idea what they were actually there for. If I were investigating this case I would take his claim that he didn't know them with an entire shaker of salt. This is important because it is vital to stay grounded in reality, and the reality is that things like this happening to YOU, just out of the blue, is not something worth fretting about.

Until it does happen, little to late to to fret about then, then what will you do?

The problem is that your meme based argument, while catchy, is predicated on the highly unlikely idea that it will ever happen to me. Just like I might win the lottery but would be stupid to waste time actively planning for it, it would be stupid to actively plan for this minute probability becoming reality. Yet whenever it happens to ONE person (and there is still good reason to believe that one person created much different circumstances for themselves than apply to the rest of us anyway) there are people who leap into this as if suddenly having people dressed like ninjas invade your house is such a likely turn of events that you better get prepared...even "taking precautions" that statistics show put you at more risk rather than less.

@intotheminx:

I actually didn't say "it won't happen to everyone," which as you say is an obvious truth. I'm saying that EVERY individual, barring unusual circumstances like "I run a cash business out of my home and everyone knows it" or "I run around my neighborhood playing tough guy and making enemies" can honestly say that "the odds of this happening to me are so vanishingly small that making plans for it would be absurd."

@intotheminx: A whole lot more people go around saying "that will never happen to me" and they are right, it doesn't. Kind of like the people who walk around saying "I'm not going to get struck by lightning" or "I'm not going to win the lottery." These things all DO happen...but the odds for any individual are that they won't.

As to the girl that turned herself in...she said they "heard there was a lot of money in the house" from a friend. The guy may not have known the kids breaking in directly, but there was apparently some intersection of circles there. So one more time: if you aren't the person who a) keeps a lot of cash in your house and b) lets that fact become known in social circles that include a bunch of young burglars, then you c) don't need to carry a rifle when you go to your kitchen.

thegerg

No, I think they were there looking to hurt somebody. Burglars look to get in and out without confrontation. They generally don't carry weapons and wear masks. If this were my neighborhood I'd give you five to one odds that there was a drug dealer in the house and that the group breaking in expected to leave with cash and dope and knew they were gonna have to fight for it. A guy who "just happens" to carry an AR-15 with him when he goes to the kitchen for a snack tends to fit that picture as well. If I were the cops I'd be looking for where the guy hid the stash after the shooting.