>If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y

>If there was a cause X that randomly killed 5 people in the US every year, and there was countermeasure Y that prevented those deaths, you wouldn't implement Y because X isn't a meaningful threat to any single person? Well that's a hard question to answer, we still don't know how to evaluate the value of a human life. So in the general case I would say no I would, if it wasn't prohibitively expensive. (Relative to the number of actual damages caused.) > I think the answer should be: it depends. Okay. I didn't cover the kinds of issues you talk about in the following paragraph because in context everyone reading should know about them by this point. I could go on about the civil costs of gun control, the material costs, weighed alternative options like better mental health treatment, or not naming the shooter on national TV; etc. But all that stuff could fit into a form letter. [0] [0]: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt EDIT: I accidentally said "yes" when I meant "no" in the first response paragraph. That is, in the general case; no I would implement countermeasure Y to prevent 5 annual deaths.