The probability of a civil insurrection can be roughly estimated, and is completely external to me. My decisions have no effect on that. The average rate of gun suicides have nothing to do with the probability that I will turn my gun on myself, which is zero. As the author says, if you think you're going to use your rifle for murder or suicide, you should get rid of it.
People are always conflating population averages with individual probabilities, as if the behavior of other people has some magical nonlocal interaction with an individual's behavior.
The rate of alcohol-related sickness and death is probably much higher for people who keep hard liquor in the house. But I can fill my cupboards with whiskey and never take more than one drink a day. Know thyself.
> the probability that I will turn my gun on myself, which is zero.
Assuming that you're not going to change and that your life will be exactly the same, forever. Do you think there's ever been someone that thought there's a 0% chance they'd ever kill themselves and eventually did it? What's wrong with those people? Are they just stupid? But you're not stupid, right? You're smart, and in addition to there being 0% chance of you ever killing yourself, there's also a 0% chance of you being wrong about that.
It's dishonest to make those kinds of statements with absolute certainty.
People are always conflating population averages with individual probabilities, as if the behavior of other people has some magical nonlocal interaction with an individual's behavior.
The rate of alcohol-related sickness and death is probably much higher for people who keep hard liquor in the house. But I can fill my cupboards with whiskey and never take more than one drink a day. Know thyself.