As someone who drinks regularly, though not excessively, I was immediately drawn to Derek Thompson’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Is Moderate Drinking Okay?” (gift link here).
Beyond my personal interest in alcohol, Thompson makes some excellent observations that bear on the risk calculations involved in owning firearms. I discuss the issue of risk in Chapter 6 (“Pascal’s Wager and Firearms”) and Chapter 7 (“Guns as Risk Factors for Negative Outcomes”) of my book, Gun Curious.
Thompson observes: “Owning a swimming pool dramatically increases the relative risk that somebody in the house will drown, but the absolute risk of drowning in your backyard swimming pool is blessedly low.” The same is true of gun ownership as a risk factor for suicide, as I discuss in Gun Curious (see pp. 122-23).
Thompson also highlights the benefits that accrue to us when we take on risk. He writes, “life isn’t—or, at least, shouldn’t be—about avoiding every activity with a whisker of risk. . . . Even salubrious activities—trying to bench your bodyweight, getting in a car to hang out with a friend—incur the real possibility of injury.”
As I note in Gun Curious, “Although risk can never be eliminated entirely from gun ownership and use, we are willing to take on some of that risk in exchange for current and potential future benefits” (p. 104).
“Rather than thinking of risk as something to avoid,” I write, “I think of it in the same way that gun trainer Will Petty does. ‘Risk is our currency,’ Petty says, ‘and we get to choose where we spend it'” (p. 104).
After all, as I have said before, the lifetime risk of death for human beings living their lives is 1.0.
Gun Culture 2.0 
“‘Risk is our currency,’ Petty says, ‘and we get to choose where we spend it'”
Also, we must consider individual risk versus social risk. Upon hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the safest thing an individual young man could do would have been to somehow cripple one of his big toes to render himself “4-F” under the draft. But if everyone did that, it would have increased the risk to everyone. (Volunteering for the Marines would have been one of the most individually risky responses.)
That brings up the moral issue of self-defense versus submission. If we prefer to let petty criminals on the street rule over us rather than take the risk of defending ourselves (and being armed to do so), then are we even worthy of benefiting from the risks taken and sacrifices made by our forefathers to secure our freedom?
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“After all, as I have said before, the lifetime risk of death for human beings living their lives is 1.0.” – David Yamane
“No one here gets out alive” – Jim Morrison (or The Doors, generally)
Great minds think alike? Well, this one is easy, though modern Americans don’t like to contemplate it. Memento Mori was once a fairly routine idea to spend time contemplating. Life being limited adds a bit of urgency to the mix
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Is it great minds or reinventing the wheel? lol. As a generally risk averse person, I am constantly balancing my root desire for safety with my competing desire to live, experience, explore.
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Ok, so maybe that is why I am still alive. My penchant for drinking too much chardonnay, malbec, and pinot, and occasionally a little top shelf bourbon, is balanced by my penchant for long, hard bicycle rides and hikes with the dog? Or is it luck?
Also, the idea of relative risk v absolute risk goes to your comments about suicide or the “risks”of having a gun in the house, which you discussed on your blog a few years ago (and which I had hoped would be developed into a publishable paper).
I think the bottom line is that doing most anything recklessly, badly, or thoughtlessly leads to bad outcomes up to and including premature death. I learned a long time ago that if I did “stupid things at stupid times with stupid people” on my motorcycle, it might end up sliding down the road with me sliding behind it (been there, done that). I’ve expanded that warning label to guns and alcohol.
Besides, my current motorcycle cost too much for me to want to crash it.
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I’m not invested in writing articles for the public health community, but I will be talking to the UConn ARMS Center next month about my views of risk in a webinar. Stay tuned for details.
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I suspect you would not get very fair treatment in the public health community. Still, it is frustrating to see such vast amounts of bad scholarship out there competing for readership with those few points of light.
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I refer you “Cancer” by Joe Jackson.
“Everything gives you cancer, there’s no cure, there’s no answer”
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As my dear departed Dad used to say “If you aren’t living on the edge, you’re taking up to much space.”
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Haven’t heard that one before but am logging in.
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