Good lord pantom
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The world is full of people with weapon training, but it’s not full of people who are required by their job to keep current with that training so as to be able to use the weapon on the job should the need arise. Former vets, for instance, may have had plenty of weapons training, but they, like anyone else, can get rusty.
You’ve seen too many movies
Have you seen a Dr.Reality,Reality reality
Pantom: when was the last time you went shooting at a municipal range?
Because the lack of competence and safety awareness, combined with the utter contempt and arrogance for the rest of us “civilians” displayed by our “public defenders” scared me into joining a private gun club.
This is not a “it happened once” anectdote. Quite a few shooters in east metro Dallas no longer patronize the municipal range, because the “thin blue line” scared them away.
As a competiton shooter I can guarentee you I spend 10 times as much time training with a firearms as most law enforcement officers. For the record I have never had an accidental discharge or any safety warnings as an IPSC competitor on or off the firing line. Cops are people too, a badge does not (as MGibson pointed out) grace you with some magical ability to handle a gun safely. I believe the most important factor in gun safety is realizing just how much damage a bullet can do. Cops see that, I as an EMT saw that, many millitary personell see it. Once you understand that you see guns in a different light. Like any powerful tool, they have to be handled with respect.
I lock my doors at night, none of those deterrents stop someone with intent to harm me or my family. I might seem a little paranoid but I was on a jury that put a very bad boy with alot of very bad friends in prison for a very long time. His friends hired a PI to find us jurors to try and quiz us on deliberations and he turned over our names and addresses to these people. I don’t have a CCW nor would I carry at work etc, but if something bad goes bump in the night, it will be facing armed resistance.
dead intruders cannot hurt my family
And you are now the expert on gun safety who can determine this :rolleyes:
I do not love my guns any more or less than I love my computers, both are tools that can serve my faily when the need arises.
Damn, every time I wanted to post to this thing, I had another half-page of stuff to read through, though rarely did any of it address the OP!
As for me, I used to carry my Mag-Lite and my K-Bar to investigate noises. Nowadays, I’ve swapped the K-Bar for a SA Model 1911. The first two rounds are Glasers, the rest are hollow-point. Same with the back-up mag.
I’m single and an apartment dweller and right now I’m in a corporate apartment, so litterally nothing here is mine except the clothes and a pillow in the bedroom and my wok in the kitchen. Still, if someone comes into my, for all intents and purposes, home and had designs on the property here, they are likely to be quite disappointed upon entering the bedroom and receiving a gut-shot or a solid knee-capping.
Now at my actual home, where all of my stuff is at, they would get the gut-shot/knee-capping and then, it would seem, they struggled or resisted and…well, I wouldn’t count on them causing any more problems.
The difference, to me, is that in one place, it’s not my stuff, it’s just me so I would hold off until they confronted me. In the other, it’s all my stuff, my lifes accumulation, and me, so it might warrent a slightly different tack. My other thought would be to leave through a window (second floor at “real” home) and climb back up the stairs to wait for them outside the door. In this case, I think a knee-capping would again be in order, since I’d be initiating it, but almost assuredly no court would find me guilty, so…screw them.
This isn’t a debate over what’s right or wrong, moral or immoral, it’s a question of what would you do when faced with an intruder in your home. I would, honestly, be looking to do some damage to them. By way of warning, I suppose I could put a “Member, USMCR Pistol Team” sticker up on my door or/and windows, eh?
How My Father Handled the Robber
My father is 66 years old. He is also 6’5" tall and weighs in at about 275 pounds. While he may be a little soft in some spots, he’s still a very, very imposing figure. He’s also a very level headed, easy going man until you get his dander up. A young man who broke into my parents house a few days before Xmas did, indeed, get his dander up.
He and my mother own a little convenience store about a mile from the house. Right before Xmas someone came into the store and told my Dad that he had seen a suspicious looking kid looking in the windows of the house. My father investigated and found the side door broken. Instead of calling the police, he went into the house. A center hall leads to their bedroom, and that’s the only way in or out. Dad said that he got about half way down the hall when he heard someone say “Oh shit.” The poor sap then tried to get past my dad and out the door.
Long story short, the intruder ended up with a concussion, broken ribs, teeth missing, a broken nose, and a missing ear. When the police got there (my Mom called them from the store after not hearing anything from my Dad) Dad was standing on the guy’s throat and kicking him in the stomach. Had my father had a gun (of which he keeps several in the house) I’m very sure that he would have killed the intruder without hesitation. He damn near killed him with his bare hands.
The most amazing bit of this story is that the guy sued my father for the beating. It was thrown out of court, but my father was lectured by the judge about taking matters into his own hands and being foolhardy enough to enter the house. My father, who has the utmost respect for the law, said “Your honor, if I had the opportunity to do it all over I’d change one thing. He’d have never come out of the house alive.”
Please, if you know what’s good for you, don’t break into my parents’ home.
I’m no expert on gun safety, obviously, never having even so much as picked up a gun in my entire life (and having no intention of ever doing so). But I do know the public face of the NRA, where the spokesmen are constantly haranguing the public about how much they teach their members about gun safety.
And then along comes this thread, where we have a number of posters claiming that they sleep with loaded guns beside them. Needless to say, I suspected well before perusing this thread that a loaded weapon and a gun owner can frequently be found together in the gun owner’s house.
Sorry, but no way I’m exposing myself or my family to the risk of being in the same house with a mere civilian keeping a loaded weapon who may or may not have adequate training. Not a chance I am now or ever will be willing to take. Being no expert, I have no way of knowing if the person is being at all safe in their handling of the weapon.
Fortunately, there have also been plenty of posts with a ton of useful info about how to put together a realistic plan for the OP situation. Interestingly, gunplay is not up there as an option in these more realistic scenarios. Maybe some of you should think about that, hard. I suspect that it doesn’t go real well with your entrenched ideologies, though.
My position is simple: I’m doing everything I know how to minimize the risks of being exposed to crime, and that includes keeping away from people who engage in deliberately life-threatening practices, of which the most life threatening of all is owning a tool of death. (Included in this would be someone who owns a pit bull, for instance. No way I’m walking into that house either.)
Pantom: Since you’re so smugly content to revel in your own fear and ignorance, would you mind terribly shutting up and going away?
You don’t have to, of course. I developed a BS filter a long time ago, and can skip over your posts anywhere I find them, if necessary.
It’s just that, without something meaningful to contribute other than just haranguing us evil, homicidal gun owners, the message board might load a bit quicker.
Excuse me…
But I sleep with my loaded guns UNDER the bed.
Pantom,
Upon reflection, I kind of like your approach. Under absolutley no circumstances would I want you polluting the minds of my future children. My worst nightmare is that they would grow up seeing themselves as “mere civilians” and approach authority figures on their knees with their hands out looking for guidance. I have always had a small amount of pride in my independence, and my ability to look out for myself. I look forward to passing on this confidence and independence to my children. I only hope that more people with your particular brand of living take your position and let the rest of us raise our children without the bad influence and distraction people like you provide.