In a strange way my wife and I have been slowly going down the path to carrying pistols for self defense. Not only was this a far thought in our minds not too long ago, but we are both still uncertain if this is the right thing for us to do.
The first thing that happened is we moved from a liberal leaning area of California to a quite conservative area. In this new place the Sheriff thinks it is quite acceptable, and constitutional, for citizens to carry self defense weapons. Second my adult son wanted to own a rifle which I had not problem with. In fact we pooled our money to buy a gun safe. I then bought a .22 rifle for myself. I had had a .22 rifle for several years a couple of decades back. They are accurate, fun to shoot, have almost no recoil, and the cartridges are cheap. "Plinking" at tin cans was always a lot of fun.
I made another gun purchase mostly out of protest. Both the California laws and federal commentary suggested gun and ammunition ownership was being attacked. To me this was contrary to the constitution. I bought a semi-automatic pistol out of spite and to make a statement. I was not thinking of self defense at that time.
I believe that the 2nd amendment was ratified with much forethought. There were obviously good reasons for implementing the 2nd amendment, and to me tyranny was one of them. We elect our officials and expect them to work on our behalf. If they turn against us we need the ability to confront them. Of course this seems ridiculous today but there are hints that things are going in that direction. I'm not saying any conditions exist today, but who knows what will happen ten or twenty years down the line. I do firmly believe that if the citizens are not allowed to arm themselves any negative turns the government could make would be accelerated.
I say if the 2nd amendment is to be overturned then let it be so, not by imposing restrictions at the state and federal level or by executive action, but by a constitutional amendment.
It turns out I didn't like shooting the semi-automatic 9mm pistol because it had such a big recoil, and twice I cut my hand open because I wasn't paying enough attention to the slide and my hand position. Instead I decided I liked the .22 format, and wanted to shift away from a semi-automatic to a revolver. The revolver wouldn't have the slide issue, and the pistol wouldn't have the kick with the smaller ammo. I did some research and decided which pistol I wanted. My wife then bought, as a gift, the more traditional looking long barrel .22 10 shot revolver with wooden grips that I do so much enjoy plinking with.
We began to be aware of the increase in violent crimes in our area, and most of them involved a man attacking a woman in all sorts of venues around the city. My wife started carrying pepper spray, and then a stun gun. We talked a little about carrying a self-defense pistol and that conversation kept popping up over the next few months.
About this time I realized that I would go to the range with my son and shoot the .22 rifle and pistol but still didn't like shooting the 9mm semi-automatic. I then traded in the 9mm semi-automatic for a 9mm revolver. This was the first gun that I would consider a carry size pistol. It wasn't a plan to carry at that point, but that thought was a very small part of the decision. I really just wanted to shift from the semi-automatic to a revolver more than anything else. I didn't want anything large or heavy. And I did have a few hundred rounds of 9mm that I could still use. I liked the revolver and the use of "moon clips" to load the gun. Again self defense was just a passing conversation at this point.
My wife and I continued to talk about self-defense when I began to realize she felt the potential need to carry herself. This seemed to be born out of a combination of concern about local events as well as the very real potential that she would one day be living alone in our house. Not only was I seven years her senior, but women tend to live longer than men, and my family has a history of passing about or before age 75. My wife's family tended to live longer. So she had the concern that she may living in this house for ten to twenty years after I'm gone. She feels unsafe if she goes shopping and is walking through a parking lot or entering/exiting her car. She has also ceased to walk on a popular trail in our area because women have been mugged there. We both felt the need to have protection once about a year ago when we came across a charging dog and homeless man on a forested trail. And I have had a bear cross my path on a trail nearby. We've also had a bear in our back yard three times. Most likely a bear will run away if we show up, and we are unlikely to stop a bear attack with a pistol, but we'd feel better having a gun in those cases.
We decided the next move would be to go to the local indoor shooting range and try out a pistol she had heard about, one small for carry purposes. We did just that, taking my 9mm revolver along to compare. There was no comparison. The .380 she was looking at was much smaller, and had much less recoil than my 9mm. On the way home from the indoor range we stopped at a gun shop and bought that ,380 for her.
Without too much more conversation we decided the next step would be to take the required 8 hour CCW permit class. By the time we scheduled the class and attended it we had begun to dig into the whole realm of self-defense with the aid of a CCW. During that time it became real that there could possibly a time in my future when I could be in a position to defend myself or my family, or perhaps someone else, with the pistol I would carry. I wasn't sure about my ability to shoot another human being.
While not a big part of the story I decided to buy a duplicate of my wife's pistol mostly due to lower recoil. It would actually hurt to shoot the 9mm pistol, but I still was going to keep that gun too.
Here I sit two weeks after the CCW class going through the 10 day waiting period. When we receive the new gun we will fill out the CCW forms and turn them in. Each of us will register all three pistols, the 9mm revolver and the two .380 semi-automatics.
In the mean time I've been reading a large book which contains information all about self-defense. I've also been watching youtube.com videos about shootings, both by police and citizens. I have two major concerns.
My first concern is I would use poor judgment in a self-defense situation and shoot somebody when it really wasn't called for. I'm now 70 years old and am fully aware that my physical and mental reaction time are that of a 70 year old man, not a 30 year old. How could I take the time to analyze the situation when there are often just seconds of time between realizing my life was in danger and the need to pull the trigger - or not.
Could I shoot somebody on purpose in a self-defense situation? Yes if the danger was clear. But would I know if the danger was clear? I'm just not sure. I would want time to asses the situation but I doubt if I'd have the time. I'm not hot-headed so I'm more likely to fail on the side of not doing something quick enough, rather than on the side of doing it irrationally.
My second concern is being put on trial for the action of shooting, and possibly killing, someone. Even the police are scrutinized when they use their pistol. It saddens me to see our public servants being raked over the coals when they have just done their duty while following protocol. Yes there can be errors, or even bad cops, so action is taken in every case until they are cleared. But I'm not a cop.
I believe I'm in a different place on this issue than my wife is. Being a woman is more at risk than being a man when it comes to personal attacks. Living alone is a scary proposition. Age doesn't seem to matter much. Older women are attacked or raped too.
I do intend to complete the process of obtaining a CCW permit. I also believe that there will be situations when I feel it would be best to carry a pistol, I'm thinking of walks in the forest mostly. But I doubt if I will carry regularly.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Relief
I held little hope that Hillary Clinton would be defeated in the 2016 presidential election. The country had endured eight years of liberal control, peppered with executive orders, slowly drawing the country deeper and deeper into unrecoverable disaster. We may actually never recover from the damage already done.
I didn't realize what was happening to me but each night as a crawled into bed my mind would rapidly go through the condition of our country. I would feel stressed, sad, and helpless. I say I didn't realize what was happening because this wasn't a conscious process, it was just my mind getting ready for rest, if there was to be rest.
Then lo and behold Trump won the election. I was both stunned and elated. I had no idea if Trump would ultimately be better than Clinton. He makes radical and unpredictable statements. There was so telling in what direction would he take the country. None-the-less uncertainty was a better option in my mind than the certainty that Clinton would continue the downward spiral that we've had for eight years. Even if Trump reversed a few things that Obama effected that would be positive.
So I was surprised, and it took me a couple of days to realize it, that my just before bedtime routine was one of peace and relief, followed by a good night's sleep. And it just gets better and better.
So far, and today is just December 11, 2016, the appointments and the comments made by Trump have been much better than I thought they would. Things could change and he could make some colossal blunders, but it is possible Trump will be a good president.
I didn't realize what was happening to me but each night as a crawled into bed my mind would rapidly go through the condition of our country. I would feel stressed, sad, and helpless. I say I didn't realize what was happening because this wasn't a conscious process, it was just my mind getting ready for rest, if there was to be rest.
Then lo and behold Trump won the election. I was both stunned and elated. I had no idea if Trump would ultimately be better than Clinton. He makes radical and unpredictable statements. There was so telling in what direction would he take the country. None-the-less uncertainty was a better option in my mind than the certainty that Clinton would continue the downward spiral that we've had for eight years. Even if Trump reversed a few things that Obama effected that would be positive.
So I was surprised, and it took me a couple of days to realize it, that my just before bedtime routine was one of peace and relief, followed by a good night's sleep. And it just gets better and better.
So far, and today is just December 11, 2016, the appointments and the comments made by Trump have been much better than I thought they would. Things could change and he could make some colossal blunders, but it is possible Trump will be a good president.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Self Driving Cars and Car Ownership
There are predictions forming that the combination of autonomous cars, self-driving cars, and companies like Uber are beginning to, at an increasing rate, impact car ownership.
The theory is if cars can be shared you won't need to buy one. They say it will be cheaper to use a service for your transportation needs instead of owning your own vehicles. While this may be true on a small scale, I doubt if it will exceed a few percentage points in automobile sales in the near future. Lets consider the market potential, and the barriers.
How much money can be saved by not owning your own car will be a major factor. According to AAA.
"Due to declines in gas prices and finance charges, the annual cost to own and operate a vehicle has fallen to $8,698, a nearly 2 percent drop from last year, according to AAA's 2015 Your Driving Costs study."
That's a lot of money to work with. Save on insurance, repairs, registration, fuel, maintenance, etc. Who wouldn't want that. And you don't even have to wash your car. Those companies who provide the autonomous cars so you don't have to own a car will bear those costs, they'll just spread it over many passengers. But is that the end of the story?
Sharing vehicles is ideal for someone who lives in a big city where parking is expensive and hard to find. Then you find an overnight parking space only to wake up to a car buried in snow. Using a service like Uber, or some other type of car sharing organization, could certainly be faster and cheaper than owning your own car. In fact I believe this is already true of many people. If you live in New York City it is quite possible you don't own a car, you take taxis/Uber or the subway everywhere, and occasionally you rent a car for excursions. It is possible that this segment of the population will grow in terms of not owning a car, but ever so slightly.
Taxis have been available for decades but haven't replaced privately owned cars yet. Uber is cheaper which changes the equation some, if that will persist. Autonomous cars may be even cheaper than today's Uber because there is no driver to pay.
The cities with a far less dense population as New York, say Albany or St Paul, may actually somewhat fulfill the promise of the autonomous vehicle and reduced car ownership. Here people have a choice to buy a car or take Uber or some other future service that offers autonomous pick-up and delivery of humans. They haven't yet become a society of non-car-owners so there is room for change. Some of the impetus to give up owning a car or not depends on driving patterns.
If you live many miles from work the cost of a daily car service may kill the idea of giving up your car. In other words it may be cheaper to own the car than to use a service. Also if you have complex driving patterns such as dropping the kids off at two different schools on the way to work that can easily add to the miles you have to drive. In our house just driving our son to school and picking him up is 11,000 miles a year. I rather doubt that our family could save money by giving up the family car. Plus my wife shops on the way home. How much do you have to pay the Uber driver to wait while you fill his/her trunk with groceries, and empty the trunk at home?
Perhaps you own a boat and need a vehicle to. You may have owned two cars and could give one up, just keeping the tow vehicle. So you keep the most expensive vehicle and give up the small efficient gas sipper. Remember the AAA average cost of ownership is an average. Your costs could be less if you own an efficient car such as a Honda Civic or Prius.
Rural homes are the least likely to give up their vehicles. They may not even have other services available, and if they do the wait for an Uber driver to show up could be long. True autonomous vehicles would be better here because they may be more distributed than Uber cars. Once an autonomous car finishes it's delivery does it return to some starting location, or does it stay in the area waiting for another call close by.
I attempted to use Uber exactly once and it didn't work out. I had a plan to get to the Orlando Airport about 8am one morning. I called Uber from Disney World but I was informed that there would be a multiplier on the promised cost due to a shortage of drivers. I ended up taking a taxi which was cheaper.
Lets say you have an Uber driver take you to work and back home every day. That's like having a private car, and chauffeur, for perhaps 2 to 4 hours a day. Could that really be cheaper than owning your own car?
Then there is the personal side. What if you go golfing after work. Yes you could use a hired car and take your clubs into the office, if that's an option. But the ease of keeping your clubs, or other personal items, in your own car may be worth a lot.
Here is my biggest issue. I love to drive. I'm 69 years old and I've always loved driving. Driving is like a game to me. How to brake, how to merge, how to avoid accidents, what route to take, how to handle traffic, enjoying the open road, cruising over mountain passes with roads that curve and twist. These are things I won't easily give up. Sure I'd like a self-driving car for very long trips so I can kick back and not have to be fixated on the road for hours at a time. But what I'd want is a car with lane assist and automatic breaking that really works; there are already cars of this capability today. I still want a steering wheel, and pedals so I can drive when I want to.
Someday autonomous cars may actually fill the dream of sending the car to pick someone up and bring them home, without mom or dad having to go with the car. But I think that day is far off. Why? Because we aren't perfect. Air bags have been in cars for decades but today millions of them have to be replaced because they are killing passengers. Designers make mistakes. Mechanics and electronics fail. Software has bugs. Imagine some of the scenarios where non-accident related problems can and will arise.
In the year 2016 the state of GPS, digitized maps, and up-to-date information about roads and road conditions are simply not up to the task of directing autonomous cars. Sure they will get to the end point most of the time. But what about those other times. Imagine being in a car with no steering wheel or pedals and the car drives down a dead end, then three other autonomous cars pull up behind you blocking your way out. How do you get out of that mess. And even if you could get out of that mess what if the only passenger is a young child? let's see you could have a service like the Ford Sync so you could get help from a central source. All of these things will be corrected over time, but there will be this gap from when autonomous cars hit the road and all of these issues are minimized.
Are you in construction or some other job that requires a truck? Forget giving up that truck for Uber.
The adaption rate will likely be much slower than some think. The Toyota Prius hybrid came out almost 20 years ago. Since then Toyota has sold millions, including many more models which have had hybrid versions. Yet adaptation rates of hybrid cars is quite small, even after almost 20 years.
In 2014 in California, the peak market for hybrid cars, hybrid sales totaled 452,152 units, down 8.8% from the previous year. The hybrid market share was 2.75% of new car sales, down from 3.19% in 2013, and the lowest since 2011.
Of course that market share reduction was due to cheaper fuel, but even the 2013 figure of 3.19% is very low in terms of adaptation rate. People simply don't change quickly. Some resist the whole idea of a hybrid car. Just think of the resistance of adapting to a driver-less car.
So while I don't disagree that sometime in the future a significant percentage of the cars on the road will not be owned by individuals I see that day as at least two decades off. Not because the technology won't be there, but the myriad of individual situations are simply too big a barrier. Personally if I lived long enough I would be quite reluctant to give up my own car.
The theory is if cars can be shared you won't need to buy one. They say it will be cheaper to use a service for your transportation needs instead of owning your own vehicles. While this may be true on a small scale, I doubt if it will exceed a few percentage points in automobile sales in the near future. Lets consider the market potential, and the barriers.
How much money can be saved by not owning your own car will be a major factor. According to AAA.
"Due to declines in gas prices and finance charges, the annual cost to own and operate a vehicle has fallen to $8,698, a nearly 2 percent drop from last year, according to AAA's 2015 Your Driving Costs study."
That's a lot of money to work with. Save on insurance, repairs, registration, fuel, maintenance, etc. Who wouldn't want that. And you don't even have to wash your car. Those companies who provide the autonomous cars so you don't have to own a car will bear those costs, they'll just spread it over many passengers. But is that the end of the story?
Sharing vehicles is ideal for someone who lives in a big city where parking is expensive and hard to find. Then you find an overnight parking space only to wake up to a car buried in snow. Using a service like Uber, or some other type of car sharing organization, could certainly be faster and cheaper than owning your own car. In fact I believe this is already true of many people. If you live in New York City it is quite possible you don't own a car, you take taxis/Uber or the subway everywhere, and occasionally you rent a car for excursions. It is possible that this segment of the population will grow in terms of not owning a car, but ever so slightly.
Taxis have been available for decades but haven't replaced privately owned cars yet. Uber is cheaper which changes the equation some, if that will persist. Autonomous cars may be even cheaper than today's Uber because there is no driver to pay.
The cities with a far less dense population as New York, say Albany or St Paul, may actually somewhat fulfill the promise of the autonomous vehicle and reduced car ownership. Here people have a choice to buy a car or take Uber or some other future service that offers autonomous pick-up and delivery of humans. They haven't yet become a society of non-car-owners so there is room for change. Some of the impetus to give up owning a car or not depends on driving patterns.
If you live many miles from work the cost of a daily car service may kill the idea of giving up your car. In other words it may be cheaper to own the car than to use a service. Also if you have complex driving patterns such as dropping the kids off at two different schools on the way to work that can easily add to the miles you have to drive. In our house just driving our son to school and picking him up is 11,000 miles a year. I rather doubt that our family could save money by giving up the family car. Plus my wife shops on the way home. How much do you have to pay the Uber driver to wait while you fill his/her trunk with groceries, and empty the trunk at home?
Perhaps you own a boat and need a vehicle to. You may have owned two cars and could give one up, just keeping the tow vehicle. So you keep the most expensive vehicle and give up the small efficient gas sipper. Remember the AAA average cost of ownership is an average. Your costs could be less if you own an efficient car such as a Honda Civic or Prius.
Rural homes are the least likely to give up their vehicles. They may not even have other services available, and if they do the wait for an Uber driver to show up could be long. True autonomous vehicles would be better here because they may be more distributed than Uber cars. Once an autonomous car finishes it's delivery does it return to some starting location, or does it stay in the area waiting for another call close by.
I attempted to use Uber exactly once and it didn't work out. I had a plan to get to the Orlando Airport about 8am one morning. I called Uber from Disney World but I was informed that there would be a multiplier on the promised cost due to a shortage of drivers. I ended up taking a taxi which was cheaper.
Lets say you have an Uber driver take you to work and back home every day. That's like having a private car, and chauffeur, for perhaps 2 to 4 hours a day. Could that really be cheaper than owning your own car?
Then there is the personal side. What if you go golfing after work. Yes you could use a hired car and take your clubs into the office, if that's an option. But the ease of keeping your clubs, or other personal items, in your own car may be worth a lot.
Here is my biggest issue. I love to drive. I'm 69 years old and I've always loved driving. Driving is like a game to me. How to brake, how to merge, how to avoid accidents, what route to take, how to handle traffic, enjoying the open road, cruising over mountain passes with roads that curve and twist. These are things I won't easily give up. Sure I'd like a self-driving car for very long trips so I can kick back and not have to be fixated on the road for hours at a time. But what I'd want is a car with lane assist and automatic breaking that really works; there are already cars of this capability today. I still want a steering wheel, and pedals so I can drive when I want to.
Someday autonomous cars may actually fill the dream of sending the car to pick someone up and bring them home, without mom or dad having to go with the car. But I think that day is far off. Why? Because we aren't perfect. Air bags have been in cars for decades but today millions of them have to be replaced because they are killing passengers. Designers make mistakes. Mechanics and electronics fail. Software has bugs. Imagine some of the scenarios where non-accident related problems can and will arise.
In the year 2016 the state of GPS, digitized maps, and up-to-date information about roads and road conditions are simply not up to the task of directing autonomous cars. Sure they will get to the end point most of the time. But what about those other times. Imagine being in a car with no steering wheel or pedals and the car drives down a dead end, then three other autonomous cars pull up behind you blocking your way out. How do you get out of that mess. And even if you could get out of that mess what if the only passenger is a young child? let's see you could have a service like the Ford Sync so you could get help from a central source. All of these things will be corrected over time, but there will be this gap from when autonomous cars hit the road and all of these issues are minimized.
Are you in construction or some other job that requires a truck? Forget giving up that truck for Uber.
The adaption rate will likely be much slower than some think. The Toyota Prius hybrid came out almost 20 years ago. Since then Toyota has sold millions, including many more models which have had hybrid versions. Yet adaptation rates of hybrid cars is quite small, even after almost 20 years.
In 2014 in California, the peak market for hybrid cars, hybrid sales totaled 452,152 units, down 8.8% from the previous year. The hybrid market share was 2.75% of new car sales, down from 3.19% in 2013, and the lowest since 2011.
Of course that market share reduction was due to cheaper fuel, but even the 2013 figure of 3.19% is very low in terms of adaptation rate. People simply don't change quickly. Some resist the whole idea of a hybrid car. Just think of the resistance of adapting to a driver-less car.
So while I don't disagree that sometime in the future a significant percentage of the cars on the road will not be owned by individuals I see that day as at least two decades off. Not because the technology won't be there, but the myriad of individual situations are simply too big a barrier. Personally if I lived long enough I would be quite reluctant to give up my own car.
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