No; nor has anybody I know, as far as I know. This just doesn't happen
much in my experience, nor in the experience of 90% of the regions of
even _this_ country, I'd wager.
> Lets say its a criminal. If its a criminal there's real chance that the
> criminal is 'armed and dangerous', i.e, you have probably heard that a
> great many people get killed by criminals.
No, a trivial amount of people get killed by criminals, at least in
Canada, especially once you eliminate (i) domestic homicides, and (ii)
stabbings in bars. There's basically not much "killing by criminals"
left after that. Heck, I lived in Winnipeg the year it was momentarily
the murder capital of Canada (I think this meant 21 killings in 600,000)
-- and still the chance of getting killed by criminals was essentially
zero, unless (i) people in your family killed you, or (ii) you were in the
wrong bars arguing with knife-wielding people. The odds of being killed
by strangers in your home in anyplace I've ever lived simply aren't worth
worrying about, and they sure as heck aren't worth doling out 400 million
guns to the general populace. There just isn't _that_ much violent crime,
and it hasn't increased at all in the last decade, in Canada or the US.
> (*) Protection. What does it mean to feel safe? I was considering the
> other day "why do people feel safe" in their homes, in society.
>
> Lets say you, John Doe, are sitting at home just now. In reality, anyone
> could, say, smash through your window and whack you in the face.
>
> What actually makes you feel that won't happen?
>
> Essentially it's the wieght of society, societal rules, the judicial
> system, laws and specifically the police.
No, not at all, it's because most people are not out to smash the window
and kill me. If they were, they would, but they obviously don't. The
law has little or nothing to do with this (there are various reasons why
_I_ don't smash through other people's windows and attack them, none of
which are whatever the law says), and the police have even less effect.
Normal people just don't attack people, and thankfully most people are
fairly normal.
Now, sure, if and when I get violently attacked in some form, I'll feel
differently, which means absolutely nothing; people who have undergone
threatening experiences are in no position to do rational probability
calculus. That doesn't affect the probabilities.
> Americans (in the sense you mean, in the context of this discussion) are
> totally tuned in to REALITY. Canadians and everyone else live in an utter
> fantasy world. A childish, dreamlike, under-your-parents state where "the
> police will stop people breaking into your house, the UN will stop
> injustices by talking about it, no one really wants to hurt you" and so on.
Well, no, "Canadians and everyone else" live with a lot less crime, for
starters. Secondly, there isn't that much crime, period. 10 murders in
Salt Lake City per year? I rest my case. Bathtubs and chewing gum kill
more people. If your family members and friends aren't out to get you,
then the chances are basically nil that anybody is.
-- Evan Kirchhoff, kirchh@umich.edu