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The Value of Carrying a Firearm

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:02:05 No.12688886 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12689103 >>12690603 >>12690950

Kommrades! I read an old Ivan post the other day pic related which got me thinking, what is the utility of owning and carrying a firearm? I have attempted to provide an analytical solution. Firearms have many uses, but this solution will only consider the value they have as tools for self defense.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:11:32 No.12688985 Report

Quoted By:

>>12688960
Nope. The chance for any given year is .00403. Take the chance that youll go by safely, .9957 per year. Now use the binomial theorem. That binomial theorem will get you every time. .9957

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:18:52 No.12689045 Report

Quoted By:

>>12688960
Nope. The chance for any given year is .00403. While that is very low indeed, the chance that you will have the wonderful luck to go each year without being a victim is significantly lower. Basic probability at work.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:18:59 No.12689049 Report

Quoted By: >>12689070

This thread is basically the best.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:21:25 No.12689070 Report

Quoted By:

>>12689049

Thanks bro, beats doing differential geometry, real math is for gays.

Poorfag

Poorfag Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:24:12 No.12689095 Report

Quoted By:

does anyone else love op's pic as much as me?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:25:25 No.12689103 Report

Quoted By:

>>12688886
someone archive this NOW

pure pwnage

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:28:42 No.12689132 Report

Quoted By: >>12689143

>tfw Ivan doesn't post on /k/ anymore

I miss that glorious bastard

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:29:49 No.12689143 Report

Quoted By:

>>12689132
We all do.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:31:16 No.12689148 Report

Quoted By:

My firearms are in my possession for the sole purpose of preparation for any such time the government is unable to protect me. Riots, floods, natural disasters, home invasion. It's a preparation the same as my stockpiled food, water, medical supplies, water purification supplies and fishing line.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:35:22 No.12689177 Report

Quoted By:

op is probably sitting in his room fondling a nugget and going all goodwill hunting on us.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO coolguy.jpg, 6KiB, 150x160

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 04:41:49 No.12689233 Report

Quoted By:

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 06:53:47 No.12690405 Report

Quoted By:

bump cause night /k/ quality

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 06:58:39 No.12690451 Report

Quoted By: >>12690590

I'll admit this thread is beyond me. But I am monitoring as wasting a thread like this would be a damn waste.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:02:34 No.12690487 Report

Quoted By:

This thread appeals to the math nerd in me, and the gun enthusiast.
Very rarely do these things combine.

OP is a cool guy, eh doesn't afraid of anything

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:10:25 No.12690545 Report

Quoted By:

just did another quick calculation.

Suppose that we are only interested in seeing what probability of being attacked is required so that there is zero utility in owning a firearm, i.e. the cost of the firearm is the same as the expected pay off we get from owning it.
19200 = probability * .75 *8,000,000

probability = .0032
probaility of being attacked in the u.s. per year .00403

Holy shit so owning a gun for life pays of even if you only consider a single year out of that life.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:14:35 No.12690589 Report

Quoted By:

>all dat math
>equations
>stuff
>end up with number
>says that owning a gun is worthwhile via probability and calculation
are you a wizard?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:14:45 No.12690590 Report

Quoted By:

>>12690451
If you want to math nerd it up, get into some long range shooting. For extra points, don't use ballistic tables. Calculate drop and adjustments for any given range by hand.

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO teddy.jpg, 7KiB, 275x183

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:15:17 No.12690603 Report

Quoted By:

>>12688886
>688886
>implying palindrome
>implying this thread

mfw

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:17:38 No.12690622 Report

Quoted By: >>12690645 >>12690671 >>12690699

Why doesn't the equation account for both accidental firing injury/death?
Guns are perfectly safe and worthwhile to us until one sad fuck gets someone in his family hurt by accident.
And quite frankly it's part of why anti-gunners say we shouldn't have guns, since it gets wrapped into their statistics anyways.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:19:44 No.12690645 Report

Quoted By: >>12690699

>>12690622
This should be very doable, and is worthwhile point.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:22:04 No.12690671 Report

Quoted By: >>12690758

>>12690622

Thats a good point! At 680 accidental shooting deaths a year and 15,000 injuries they are small, but not insignificant. I chose not to include them mainly because the accidental shooting resulting in death in particular are difficult to partition from suicides. Basically, there isnt enough good data, violent crime on the other hand is something that is very well quantified.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:22:04 No.12690672 Report

Quoted By:

Economics for the mother fucking win!! hell yeah OP

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:24:15 No.12690699 Report

Quoted By:

>>12690645
>>12690622

Also worth keeping in mind is that I assumed that the violent crime is normally distributed across the population, this is patently false. However, using a population mapping would turn the problem from a simple linear system into a 3D function.

These are all good things to consider for the next solution. Maybe an interactive map in Mathematica or something?

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS

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ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:27:46 No.12690743 Report

Quoted By: >>12690769 >>12690793

OP,

U sub g is assigning a value based on utility theory by mixing the subjective U sub l (arguably existential, and intrinsic by nature) with the exchange value of preserving ones life.

You simply cannot mix the two, and thusly I would argue that your premise is flawed.

The ancien regime of the Principates of what is now known as Germany had a method of discerning the value of a mans life in interest of compensating the surviving victims. They left out any subjective value, and assigned a pure exchange relation with the mans life or property through his finances or fair market value.

Stick with that, it worked: Weregild.

>tl;dr - apples and oranges

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:28:38 No.12690758 Report

Quoted By:

>>12690671
Still, that doesn't mean ignore it entirely, when it's a focal point of the reason NOT to own a gun.

Do it twice, first with the sum total of what would be arbitrarily considered a firearms accident (suicides included), then guess a value without suicides and use that for comparison until you get better data.

If owning a gun is worthwhile, it should in sum and total be significantly higher than not owning a gun, even with risk of accidents. The fact of a gun is, is that accidents are going to be painful and/or deadly or scary and that's a fairly big reason in the first place to not have them to most people.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:29:28 No.12690769 Report

Quoted By:

>>12690743
>The ancien regime of the Principates of what is now known as Germany had a method of discerning the value of a mans life in interest of compensating the surviving victims. They left out any subjective value, and assigned a pure exchange relation with the mans life or property through his finances or fair market value.

That's why he very specifically pointed out that it's subjective, and went with a 'neutral' 3rd party source, the EPA, to determine the value of a human life.
Their economists have already done what you've described.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:30:31 No.12690779 Report

Quoted By: >>12690893

>when i open this thread tomorrow morning i hope to see the grand unified theory of the value of gun ownership with proofs and peer-editing and reviews
>it should be cited in MLA format
>it should be submitted to a journal
It should be done by middle of tomorrow or you're all not getting your degrees.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:31:36 No.12690793 Report

Quoted By: >>12690940

>>12690743

I agree, I used 8,000,000 because that is the value provided by the EPA. But it could be whatever value you want based on your analysis, be that objective or subjective.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:37:37 No.12690869 Report

Quoted By:

OP, you've taught me something new. You're a pretty cool guy.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:37:47 No.12690870 Report

Quoted By:

this is why triptags exist OP
>>12690845

Not for long term personality attention-whoring, but rather for a single thread at a time, to prevent shit like this..

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:40:10 No.12690893 Report

Quoted By:

>>12690779
Agreed. If this 3d graph and the math behind were laid out in a /pdf or set of images. Any naysayers who come to troll this board can be shut up instantly.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:43:47 No.12690924 Report

Quoted By: >>12690941

Its settled then kommraddes. I doubt that I will be able to finish this tommorow, but I would expect within the month.

I really appreciate all the good feedback. I raise my glass of Makers to you gentlemen and scholars.

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:45:30 No.12690940 Report

Quoted By: >>12690994

>>12690793
I would prefer if we stuck to an objective value over the humans life, as far as that is possible within our modeling.

For instance, if a suicide is committed by an individual who is a net tax consumer, their death could be considered an objective benefit to those burdened by said tax. This is not kind, but we are speaking of numbers which cannot be hugged, kissed or fondly remembered.

If we take a Hobbesian view of suicides, we can safely assume that the sum lost value would be a mixed bag of mostly non-productive or low productive operands with some cases in the extreme boundaries of a binomial distribution curve.

Courier~ !bwulacYkqY

Courier~ !bwulacYkqY Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:45:31 No.12690941 Report

Quoted By: >>12690961

>>12690924
No OP. you are the scholars.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:46:23 No.12690950 Report

Quoted By:

>>12688886
To be honest, I came here tonight for nuggets and instead, I learned about Utility Theory, which is new to me. Glad you shared, OP.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:47:25 No.12690961 Report

Quoted By:

>>12690941
And then OP was a professor.

Courier~ !bwulacYkqY

Courier~ !bwulacYkqY Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:48:36 No.12690980 Report

Quoted By:

You know what, fuck it.

Requesting archivation of thread.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:50:40 No.12690994 Report

Quoted By: >>12691060

>>12690940

yes well thats fine for your model, but the idea at least in my part is to create a tool that would be useful for anyone. Personally I have trouble looking at a persons life and saying, its worth XXX. I'm completely willing to let someone else tell me what that financial value should be.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO profx.jpg, 10KiB, 233x216

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 07:54:49 No.12691022 Report

Quoted By:

pic related its op.

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:00:05 No.12691060 Report

Quoted By: >>12691143

>>12690994
I am sorry that you are unwilling to look at human life dispassionately for the sake of objective observation in the interest of science.

Since I am not burdened by such, perhaps I could be of service in establishing their values for you.

According to the Archives of General Psychiatry; Peoples of low socioeconomic status are at a significantly greater risk for mood disorders, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

As for the EPA, they are undoubtedly taking the adjusted average income of those in the United States to determine the 8 million figure. Simply said, averages mean nothing when the extremes weight the curve away from the range that is known to commit suicide most frequently.

I would need to establish data sets, and other peer reviewable metrics to really make this theory stick... but this is not what I intended on doing tonight.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:06:39 No.12691125 Report

Quoted By: >>12691165

http://chanarchive.org/request_votes
Vote!
Also, OP, you should account for the opportunity cost for the time spent shooting. That is significant if you are an active shooter.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:08:14 No.12691143 Report

Quoted By: >>12691227

>>12691060

eh, not unwilling, just not interested. An important thing to consider, especially in an informal model like this is sig figs. Since at least one of my values the .75 probability of stopping an attack if armed is just a guess, until I have far better data, theres no point in doing any kind of second analysis of what is probably pretty good data in the first place. But hey man if thats your cup of tea then go for it.

op Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:10:52 No.12691165 Report

Quoted By:

>>12691125

thats a good point, I only included 100rds a month and range fees, very low ball. I feel that opportunity cost could be useful though in a more sophisticated model. I'm not an econ major or anything I'm guessing that would just be a persons hourly wage*hours spent shooting?

I guess at some point there starts to be a trade of between simplicity of the model and accuracy. Hate to miss the forest for the trees if you know what I mean.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:16:39 No.12691222 Report

Quoted By:

shit is archived. well done op.

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS

ibnWilliam !!i4GFjDAr2vS Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:17:10 No.12691227 Report

Quoted By: >>12691289

>>12691143
Nah, just establishing rational definitions for the variables right now. Like you said, we need better data.

The EPA data is a good average, but it is not weighted for our poorly defined low-SES burdened data sets. I am working from the EPA data and drilling down to pertinent ranges within the set that will reflect the actual objective cost of death not subjective average life value. If you or I perished, the outcome would be significantly different than that of the passing of Bill Gates.

If you are content with guesses and estimates, perhaps we enjoy differing tea indeed.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:22:43 No.12691289 Report

Quoted By: >>12691399 >>12692089

>>12691227

> Implying OP has time to look at data when he's working as a janitor at MIT.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:30:04 No.12691370 Report

Quoted By:

I like this approach. Very no-nonsense, should be free of bullshit as long as no bullshit variables(I see none) or significant bullshit data for those variables is thrown in.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:33:53 No.12691399 Report

Quoted By: >>12691414

>>12691289

>implying the janitors at MIT arent smarter than 90% of /k/
>he doesnt know about second hand learning

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO willh.jpg, 6KiB, 306x165

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 08:35:10 No.12691414 Report

Quoted By:

>>12691399
> Implying slowpoke didnt get the joke

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 07 Sep 2012 09:57:34 No.12692089 Report

Quoted By:

>>12691289
I would not mind janitoring at MIT.

Faculty, of any kind at Ivy League-level universities are entitled to classes, speshul stuff, etc.

For example, there's that Yugoslav janitor at Columbia that just got his Bachelor's degree, and at not much cost. The sad part is that he almost had his PhD completed, before the war fucked him up backwards.

Also, I did a summer class at Stanford (lol Calfag), and quite a few people in the class were faculty (archival assistants, custodial staff, etc...), looking to take a class, either for fun, working towards a degree, or for some other reason.

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