I admit that I always wanted to fire a gun. I had an empty one in my hands and pulled the trigger, but it's obviously not the same.

Ecuador is definitely becoming a more violent place. I'm just not sure if a gun might help. It's cartels here, not single muggers and such. Just like the government, they have "much, much cooler guns" anyway (I had to chuckle reading that). Luckily, my little town is far off all that.

I tend to try to not have anything that anyone could want. No big TVs and other stuff. My car is crappy, so are most of my daily clothes. I don't splurge, but try to help where I can and rather spend my money there than on flashy materialistic things. Not that I could buy much, anyway, but probably still more than most people here. Also, it helps that there are a lot more obvious targets.

Thinking about living together with Ellie, Kami and Lily I might change that, though, and upgrade the security. There's the other kind of attraction there that you mentioned, and I rather be prepared to defend against a rapist or such.

As for the big picture - it's a spiral that has started now. Like the cold war. It will be hard to break that again as a society, to find a way back to more security. But as communities are breaking apart and society becomes more and more fragmented, that what unites us is vanishing, and with that the threshold to do harm.