Subject: Re: She Had No Face
If one or more visitors is breaking a window or kicking in my door at 3AM, I submit it is safe to assume they are not there selling girl scout cookies.

Even in that scenario, I intend to follows NRA advice to barricade in a bedroom, let the intruder know where I am, and that the police have been called. If they simply steal some stuff and leave, then that is the best outcome. If however they breech my barricade, that is the point where I will defend myself so long as you allow me the means to do so.

Yes, but that's the logical fallacy - imagining that specific scenario when it is so much less likely to ever happen to you than, say, someone fumbling at your doorknob at a more reasonable time because they're at the wrong house.

It reminds me very much of a conversation I once had with someone who refused to wear a seatbelt, because they didn't want to be trapped in a burning or submerged car. Which, yes - if you sit there and imagine the scenario where the car is burning or submerged and the seatbelt release is damaged, in that one specific scenario you're safer without the seatbelt. But the thing is - that's not the scenario you should base your decision on. You're vastly more likely to find yourself in any one of a number of other types of accidents where the seatbelt saves your life. You're making the wrong choice by focusing on the one scenario where the seatbelt hurts, even if it's true that such a scenario exists, because a correct appraisal of the relative probability of accidents shows that wearing the seatbelt is the right call.

For most people, imagining the scenario where there's a random intruder who for no apparent reason is hell-bent on harming you as their specific goal is the exact same type of error. Sure, in that particular imagining, you're better off having the gun - but there's so little chance of that being the situation when you use your gun (for most people) that it's a mistake to think of that case. Most people are vastly more likely to encounter much more ambiguous situations, when their thinking is clouded by fear and adrenaline and their rational determination to "follow NRA advice" goes out the window after being awakened by something that scares them.

That's not true of all people. If your abusive ex-boyfriend keeps violating the restraining order and making threats (for example) you very well may face the type of particularized high risk of someone coming into your house with intent to do you harm. But for the average person? Focusing on the one scenario where using the gun is clearly and only beneficial to you, rather than putting that in the context of the countless other scenarios where it ends up destroying your life (and perhaps someone else's).