I’m not Rain, but the reverse, I believe. Consider everything on the list that applies to you and select the thing that’s lowest on the list (which will be the “highest level” in the sense of being either a more powerful weapon or, in the case of a decision between the first two list items, a more powerful stance against weapons). This doesn’t quite work with the “other weapon” choice—if you own an assault rifle and a throwing star, you should choose “assault rifle”, not “other weapon”.
Now that I think a bit more about this, the ranking between, say, pistol and hunting rifle is arguable in the sense that a hunting rifle is a more powerful weapon, but unlike the pistol, its self-defense use is limited to the home (and the zombocalypse).
I phrased my query based on the fact that the moment I start trying to judge by anything other than ordinal position in the survey, myriad possibilities of roughly equal potential suitability come to mind. My first thought was that lower on the list is better, but (like you) I ran into a problem with the “other weapon” option being at the bottom, then I noticed that the “hunting rifle” option came later than the “assault rifle” option which seemed inconsistent with popular understandings of terms like “assault rifle”, then I thought about the fact that gun control advocates rate “hunting rifles” as less dangerous than both “assault weapons” (which of course include technically termed assault rifles and handguns of all sorts including “pistols”), and next I realized. . . .
. . . so I just fell back on mentioning the first-blush ordinal guess (in case by “higher level” the querent meant more pacifistic ideas or something like that) and the “any other ordering” contrast to make my question simpler.
tl;dr summary: Yeah, I thought lower made more sense in some respects, but had second (and third, and more) thoughts as you did, so I just simplified the question.
I’m not Rain, but the reverse, I believe. Consider everything on the list that applies to you and select the thing that’s lowest on the list (which will be the “highest level” in the sense of being either a more powerful weapon or, in the case of a decision between the first two list items, a more powerful stance against weapons). This doesn’t quite work with the “other weapon” choice—if you own an assault rifle and a throwing star, you should choose “assault rifle”, not “other weapon”.
Now that I think a bit more about this, the ranking between, say, pistol and hunting rifle is arguable in the sense that a hunting rifle is a more powerful weapon, but unlike the pistol, its self-defense use is limited to the home (and the zombocalypse).
I phrased my query based on the fact that the moment I start trying to judge by anything other than ordinal position in the survey, myriad possibilities of roughly equal potential suitability come to mind. My first thought was that lower on the list is better, but (like you) I ran into a problem with the “other weapon” option being at the bottom, then I noticed that the “hunting rifle” option came later than the “assault rifle” option which seemed inconsistent with popular understandings of terms like “assault rifle”, then I thought about the fact that gun control advocates rate “hunting rifles” as less dangerous than both “assault weapons” (which of course include technically termed assault rifles and handguns of all sorts including “pistols”), and next I realized. . . .
. . . so I just fell back on mentioning the first-blush ordinal guess (in case by “higher level” the querent meant more pacifistic ideas or something like that) and the “any other ordering” contrast to make my question simpler.
tl;dr summary: Yeah, I thought lower made more sense in some respects, but had second (and third, and more) thoughts as you did, so I just simplified the question.