Maybe I would have read it your way if I hadn't been dealing with a treat to my own family. Be that as it may, I don't structure my life or my policy views around the abstract likelihood that I might face a lunatic with a gun. Actually that's one among many reasons I think the right to arm bears crowd is irrational. They do. Oddly, on the South Side and the West Side, in the neighborhoods where there is much higher chance of facing armed criminals, the people ask for more cops and stricter gun control laws. But what do they know?
[WS:] Calling it irrational obscures more than explains here. It does not really take into account how people actually process information and how they respond to the perceived threat from the environment.
Most people are afraid not by a high probability of harm but by their perceived ability to do something about it. Examples abound. Flying is much safer in terms of likelihood of a crash than driving on a country road, yet far more people are afraid of flying than driving on the country road. Better yet, take this almost perfectly controlled "experiment" - driving a car vs. sitting in the passenger seat. People tend to be more scared while in the passenger seat than when behind the steering wheel. Those two seats are almost identical except one crucial thing - one gives you the control over the car, the other one does not.
In the same way, people are afraid of crime or attacks by deranged individuals not because of high risk of being a target of such attacks, but because there is very little they can do to avoid such attacks. So to deal with this uneasy situation, they engage in a whole host of ritualistic behavior that gives them an illusion of control. People in every culture do that cf. Bronislaw Malinowski's ethnography of Trobriand Islands, especially the role of magic in everyday activities.
>From that point of view, ritualistic behavior - like buying a gun fetish,
posting security guards and electronic gizmos are rational responses under
the condition of extreme uncertainty. Of course, from the probabilistic
point of view they do not make sense - since the risk factor does not
warrant the high cost of the "preventive" measures. But the probabilistic
approach does not do you any good when you are on a plane that crashed or
when you are attacked by a violent thug. In both situations, you are not a
random element of a set facing a chance event - but a conscious subject
capable of virtually experiencing the threat. And from a neurological
perspective - the human brain responds pretty much in the same way whether
the thereat is direct (i.e. actually experienced by the subject) or virtual
(i.e. observed by others or narrated by others.)
This is pretty much basic human psychology - well documented in research. The only "bad psychology" cum arrogance here are silly derogatory comments that some people on this list make about "middle class fears" and responses to them.
Wojtek