However, I believe that an alarm, a dog and a bat provide sufficient protection while reducing the danger of a nosy kid hurting itself (my cousin never fully recovered from shooting himself in the left hand while playing with my uncle’s handgun).
My wife is an orange county native. She didn’t grow up around guns like I did in WI. She is a girlie girl. I took her shooting once to get her familiar with guns. I keep a pistol in the night stand next to the bed. I drill her from time to time to make sure she can chamber a round, etc. She isn’t a fan of guns. I’m sure she would prefer I don’t have them but does understand that in a tough situation, they can help. It is not my first line of defense as it shouldn’t be. I have the house always locked and I am installing an alarm system. However, if someone broke in and lets say I don’t have access to the gun, she might. She wouldn’t even have to shoot the perp…she could shoot in the ceiling. The sound of the gun should scare away the perp. I think most people here that are anti-gun feel that people with them are going to use them like the movies or the wild west. That isn’t the case. There different ways to use a hammer.[/quote]
Dj: I own several guns myself, avidly support gun ownership rights, and as most long-time posters on this board know, I’m slightly to the right of Attila the Hun politically. I’ve also been in the Army and survived more than my share of firefights.
I will also tell you that I don’t keep any loaded guns in the house. Yes, we have an alarm system and dogs (including two big ones), and I lock up every night. I do keep a razor sharp 8″ SOG single-edge in my nightstand, as I know my house (especially in darkness) far better than any intruder ever could. The main reasons I don’t keep a loaded gun in the house are the various statistics and case studies about homeowners that do.
Let’s face it: Most cops can’t shoot worth a shit in a gunfight and the same applies to most soldiers in a firefight. I’ll tell you from experience that stress, adrenalin, and noise will fuck up your point-of-aim every time. Throw in inexperience, terror and low- or sub-light conditions, and your wife is as likely (statistically speaking) to shoot you as the intruder.
