I often tell two anecdotes about my mother and my daughter that involve self defense and firearms.
In the 1920 time frame my mother was walking home from work at night when a man rushed her from some bushes. She had a .22 cal S&W Ladysmith revolver in her purse. She drew the weapon and fired two shots over the attackers head. He turned and ran.
In the late 1980's my daughter had returned home from work and was in her bedroom when our burglar alarm sounded. She walked into the living room and reset the alarm. Sometimes on a windy night, the wind would trip the sensor on the sliding glass door in the kitchen.
A few minutes later, the alarm sounded again. My daughter, realizing that it was not a windy night, grabbed a large caliber revolver, a S&W model 25-2 .45 acp, and walked into the kitchen.
She found a man forcing the sliding glass door open. She pointed the revolver at him. He ran. When someone points a large frame revolver the size of a .44 magnum at you, it can be very intimidating.
She called the police and when they arrived at the front door, she told them she had a firearm in her hand and she couldn't release it. The police officers told her to point it at the floor with her finger off the trigger and open the door. One officer had to gently pry her fingers off the weapon.The police never caught the intruder.
Now these two incidents happened but they are just anecdotes. They never became statistics. Had someone been shot or my mother or daughter victimized, these stories would have become statistics. (In the case of my mother's incident, I'm not sure shootings were even tracked in the 1920s.)
But while statistics can be used in a scientific study and anecdotes can't, you can still learn lessons from anecdotes. I suspect many incidents similar to the ones I have described happen and happen more often than the incidents recorded in statistics. Of course, I have no way of proving this.
I'm glad that these anecdotes never were elevated to the status of statistics. No one was shot or killed. That's always a good thing.
Yes indeed, the writer is correct when he says, "We see danger where there is very little" and "We ignore what should worry us". That doesn't change the fact that danger exists. While you can statistically analyze your risk and determine that the chances of actually finding yourself in a dangerous situation are very slim, being prepared is not a bad idea.
I have a fire extinguisher ten feet from my computer and a fire alarm in the hallway. Since I take reasonable precautions to avoid starting a fire, I should have nothing statistically to worry about. I seriously doubt that I'll ever have to use the fire extinguisher, and I'll waste a lot of money on the batteries. But if a fire does break out, I have a better chance of saving my property and perhaps my life.
As for statistics and airplanes:
A famous statistician would never travel by airplane, because he had studied air travel and estimated that the probability of there being a bomb on any given flight was one in a million, and he was not prepared to accept these odds.
One day, a colleague met him at a conference far from home. "How did you get here, by train?"
"No, I flew"
"What about the possibility of a bomb?"
"Well, I began thinking that if the odds of one bomb are 1:million, then the odds of two bombs are (1/1,000,000) x (1/1,000,000). This is a very, very small probability, which I can accept. So now I bring my own bomb along!"http://www.keypress.com/x2815.xml
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