Are you prepared or paranoid?

Mrs. du Toit has some helpful introspective guidance on the matter.

How prepared is prepared enough and at what point does someone cross the line from being a responsible gun owner to some sort of stereotype. Are you prepared or paranoid to the extent of being delusional?

This part made me think the hardest:

There is always a danger in training and practicing something that there comes a point where you want to make use of it. You want to find some reason to justify all the time and energy. So rather than preparing to defend yourself against a mugger, you start patrolling dangerous neighborhoods at night, looking for a situation where you will find a return on your investment. That’s the danger of over training and over preparedness. Yes, you can be too prepared and that is where the line is: When you go searching for trouble or cause it (even unconsciously).

For those of us who live on farms in meth country with too-small-undermanned-and-underfunded-law-enforcement-agencies, it's a bit more complex than just patrolling a dangerous neighborhood looking for trouble. When the "dangerous neighborhood" is YOUR neighborhood, what might otherwise be considered paranoia becomes - to some extent -necessary. It's possible to be looking for trouble and hoping that you don't find any...

Food for thought.