I'm going to post this elsewhere in the thread, but a comment on Metafilter from someone who survived the siege of Sarajevo: https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-ge...

"Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces."

There's a broad category of social turmoil that is life threatening but not quite the magnitude of "professional military starts attacking citizens." Say bands of political extremists of whatever flavor start attacking towns, or other smaller-scale (in comparison to outright civil war) acts of violence erupt. I don't dispute your anecdotes from the Balkans, but using it as blanket proof to say that firearms won't ever be of benefit in times of civil unrest is not effective.

You are right, but that's not really an apocalypse but a localised civil war. Admittedly, it would be good to be prepared for that, but I think leaving the area altogether would be a more optimal solution than grabbing weapons.

Sure, but leaving the area means abandoning a place of shelter, community, and potentially a decent chunk of supplies. I agree, plenty of disasters wouldn't warrant use of firearms, but having them and not needing them is considerably better than needing them and not having them. Seems like one is strictly better than the other. I suppose possession of unnecessary firarms could risk having them stolen or otherwise ending up in the hands of people doing harm - but seeing as 30-40% of US households possess firearms, this is a moot point.

Well, my 3 weeks of food were not aimed at this "End of world as we know it" scenario and original question was not aimed at one. Just at being better prepared than average.

Guns really are also not "get and forget" kind of think. They can help or get you killed.

They might get you killed by mismanaging them (basically you shoot yourself by accident), by making you overconfident and not escaping in time, by making you a target "to get your guns", by making you suspicious (imagine checkpoints in now occupied parts of Ukraine) and getting killed in interrogation.

Guns are not all advantages in real world situation.

>Guns are not all advantages in real world situation.

I wish I could explain how ridiculous it is to remove an option from yourself before a situation arises... but if you don’t already understand that, how could I explain it?

I also think having a fire extinguisher and jumper cables / jump box is a disadvantage in your bizarro scenario where “you might shoot yourself” comes up.

It’s a little funny low obviously little experience you have with firearms - but absolutely trust agents of your government who have maybe 2-3 weeks training once during accedemy with them. Those agents are the ones not coming to help though.