>>>>>Not all killing is bad.
>>>>>If somebody killed Cho after he shot before he murdered 32 people would that have been a bad thing?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Yes, sort of. The good thing here would have been if somebody had seen how ill he was and helped him get treatment. Any other outcome is a bad thing.
>>>
>>>In a perfect world and hind-sight is 20/20. But you know it doesn't work that way.
>>>I think you're relying way too much on others to do the right thing.
>>>
>>>In the situation that was April 16th in VT, it would have been absolutely the right thing to do.
>>
>>Well, your original question was ambiguous.
>
>
>Then why did you answer "Yes, sort of"? If someone along the chain would have done something before the rampage, it would have been a great thing, not sort of great.

"Yes, sort of" was my answer to Cho being killed. Re-read what you wrote and you'll see the ambiguity. You have both "before" and "after" in there.

>>...If someone had stopped Cho (it wasn't necessarily required to kill him to stop him)
>
>You mean like shoot the guns out his hands? I thought that only happened in movies.
>

Or stop him some other way.


>>This is a risk assessment issue. Is your family at greater risk from outside threats against which a gun in your home protects, or from the gun itself? The answer varies, of course, but for most Americans, the risk of the gun in the house is much higher than the benefit it brings.
>
>Right. It's like an insurance policy. You don't think you need it until some sh!t happens to you. Then you wish you had it. I believe that's what those student felt, that someone with a gun would take cho down.

With insurance, of course, you make choices about how much to have, trading off cost now against the chance of the thing happening. For example, our home insurance has a very high deductible because we've decided that the cost of having a lower one isn't worth it. When our cars get older (we tend to drive them until they're virtually dead), we drop collision insurance because the cost isn't worth the payback. OTOH, we have a very expensive medical insurance plan because we don't want any hassles about treatment.

The gun risk assessment requires two inputs: the chance that you'll need the gun (and be able to get to it when you need it), and the risks of having a gun around. As I've said repeatedly, the actual assessment varies for each of us, but based on number of Americans killed and injured by gun accidents or by family members using a household gun, I think many people overrate the dangers and underrate the risks.

Tamar