BJ Campbell

As gun policy discussions unfold in the wake of mass shooter incidents, they routinely end in three buckets. There’s the “tyranny can never happen here” bucket, which the left has mostly abdicated in the wake of Trump winning after they called (and still call) him a tyrant. There’s the “you can’t fight the army with small arms” bucket, which is increasingly unsound given our ongoing decade-and-a-half war with Afghani tribal goat herders. And there’s the “what the hell do you need an AR-15 for anyway?” bucket, which, by its very language, eschews a fundamental lack of understanding of what those people are thinking.

I am not a prepper. But I know a few. Some of the ones I do know are smart. They may not be doing as deep an analysis as I present here, on a mathematical level, but the smart ones are definitely doing it at a subconscious level. If you want to understand the perspectives of others, as everyone in my opinion should strive to do, then you would do well to read to the end of this article.

To get where we’re going, we will need to discuss the general framework of disaster mathematics.
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Watchman note: This article's title is a bit misleading. It is far more than just a gun argument. The author presents mathematical perspectives few have considered, presents history with an eye on current world events and concludes with the truth that it is, in general, much better to have an article and not need it than to need an article and not have it.

Which is a perfectly acceptable social norm, or simply .... insurance.

continue: https://medium.com/s/story/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437