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Risk Analysis: Is Moderate Drinking Okay? Is Gun Ownership Okay?

by Tony Grist
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As someone who drinks regularly, though not excessively, I was immediately drawn to Derek Thompson’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Is Moderate Drinking Okay?” (gift link here).

Beyond my personal interest in alcohol, Thompson makes some excellent observations that bear on the risk calculations involved in owning firearms. I discuss the issue of risk in Chapter 6 (“Pascal’s Wager and Firearms”) and Chapter 7 (“Guns as Risk Factors for Negative Outcomes”) of my book, Gun Curious.

Thompson observes: “Owning a swimming pool dramatically increases the relative risk that somebody in the house will drown, but the absolute risk of drowning in your backyard swimming pool is blessedly low.” The same is true of gun ownership as a risk factor for suicide, as I discuss in Gun Curious (see pp. 122-23).

Screen cap from Derek Thompson, “Is Moderate Drinking Okay?” The Atlantic, 16 January 2025

Thompson also highlights the benefits that accrue to us when we take on risk. He writes, “life isn’t—or, at least, shouldn’t be—about avoiding every activity with a whisker of risk. . . . Even salubrious activities—trying to bench your bodyweight, getting in a car to hang out with a friend—incur the real possibility of injury.”

As I note in Gun Curious, “Although risk can never be eliminated entirely from gun ownership and use, we are willing to take on some of that risk in exchange for current and potential future benefits” (p. 104).

Screen cap from Derek Thompson, “Is Moderate Drinking Okay?” The Atlantic, 16 January 2025

“Rather than thinking of risk as something to avoid,” I write, “I think of it in the same way that gun trainer Will Petty does. ‘Risk is our currency,’ Petty says, ‘and we get to choose where we spend it’” (p. 104).

After all, as I have said before, the lifetime risk of death for human beings living their lives is 1.0.

Read the full article here

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