It’s clear, but I don’t see how my original comment could have possibly suggested that.
This might fuel the flames, but it nonetheless needs to be said: there is nothing in the world more useless than an unloaded weapon. Without ammunition the weapon is useless.
Right now I keep my GLOCK loaded and locked away in a place that is very easy for me to access, but not for Aaron. Eventually I’d like to get one of these, but I will continue to keep at least one of my weapons loaded as long as it is inaccessible to my son. The first time I get an inkling that he’s trying to get hold of one of them I’ll rethink my strategy, but since I intend to teach him about guns and shooting at a very early age (like 5 or so, if possible) and he’ll grow up with them he likely won’t ever be that curious. In my experience, people are only sneaky about doing things if they’re forbidden to do them. Take the stigma away and the problem disappears.
I don’t know, I can think of a lot of things more useless. A balloon for example. At least you could throw the gun.
Well, unless George Reeves is breaking into your house.
No but what you did suggest was that its possible to at least go out and buy a rifle, comparable to purchasing any other item as a matter of fact statement. Our system is set up both to be inconvienent and uncertain about the continuing ability to purchase a firearm and own it for the lifetimeof the weapon.
Our society is conditioned to believe weapons are bad and may induce peer pressure on an individual not to purchase a weapon, which is why I used that term the weaponless masses.
Declan
I would agree if you are talking about keeping weapons for self defense. Where I grew up in rural Alberta, hunting was very popular and gun ownership was common and quite acceptable. This was a small city, so it isn’t just farmers.
Its the same in Rural Ontario, but once you cross into the Toronto zone of influence that gets demonized real fast.
Declan
Yes, but we all know that Torontonians are a bunch of…umm…oh wait, this is GQ. 
(come from rural SK myself, I’ll let you guess what gun ownership patterns are like there)
No cite, but personal experience:
1992, here in Houston. I pull into a Stop-N-Go to get a Coke for the drive home and there’s a drunk in the parking lot hassling a woman. She asks me for help and I tell her to go inside the store. The drunk gets pissed at me and starts making fight noises. I reach back inside my car and come up with a 5-cell Maglite. I tell him in no uncertain terms to back off, right now. He laughs and takes a swing at me. I educate him with the Maglite and then call the cops and an ambulance.
If he had been sober, he would have seen the danger involved. I’m holding a weapon and wearing a T-shirt advertising my Taekwondo school. The conclusion is rather obvious.
I’ll add one to the column that says a gun without ammo is a liability. I keep my 1911 loaded, cocked and locked beside my bed. With the alarm and my locked 3rd floor bedroom doors, there’s likely little way an intruder will get to me before I’m up and at’em.
During the day I cable-lock the slide, which requires dropping the magazine.
Well, I was referring to the general hassle of purchasing any firearm, and the near impossibility of getting a handgun (of course, those are mere trifles compared to what Mrs. Gauss would do to me should I even talk about such stuff 
)
I’ll also use this as an opportunity to thank everyone who’s contributed to this thread. Thanks!
That’s not strictly true… any solid rifle- say, a SMLE Mk III*, K98 Mauser, or Springfield M1903- with no bullets in it makes a VERY useful club/quarterstafff, and if you mount a bayonet on the end… yeah, I know, totally impractical for a home defence situation, but even so… unloaded guns aren’t without their uses.
To put it another way: You blow an intruder away with a shotgun at close range, you could be up for “unreasonable force”. Smack him in the face with the shotguns butt, and I’d think a “reasonable person” would be telling the intruder to consider himself lucky that you didn’t fill him with 00SG buckshot…
Sorry for the highjack, but howdy, neighbor! I live pretty close to Platteville. Is there really increased crime in Platteville? What kind of crime? I’d heard that drug-related crime was up, and we keep getting warnings to lock up our fertilizer tanks, but I hadn’t heard that violent crime was on the rise.
As for someone in Wisconsin serving jailtime for shooting and killing an intruder in their home, I can see it happening. It would depend on the make-up of the jury and who the judge was, but I can completely see that happening. I’m not saying that it would happen absolutely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
what makes you think it’s nearly impossible? You need to jump through some hoops (firearms safety training, detailed record check by the police, and join a gun club, but it’s not “nearly impossible.” (there are, of course, severe restrictions on what you can do with a handgun once you have it, but that’s a different story.)
Except for one little detail, which is what makes it useless: if you aim an unloaded weapon at somebody and they either don’t believe you or don’t think you’ll shoot, you’ve made your position infinitely worse.
Not everybody is intimidated by a weapon. Sometimes you have to follow through. If you act like you can but you can’t you’re in much bigger trouble than you would be in if you had just acted passive from the start, which is of course the polar opposite of what guns for self-defense is all about.
I was going to add, I know several people in Canada who own handguns, and whilst there are restrictions on their use, they’re no worse than Australia.
It depends what you’re after, I guess. If you wanted a Webley Mk VI or a Mauser Broomhandle or a Cap & Ball revolver, they’re reasonably easy to acquire provided you’ve got the licence. If you want a .50AE Desert Eagle, you might have more trouble, and I don’t think there’s any legal way to own a snub-nose revolver in Canada without being a recognised collector.
As Northern Piper says, all the hoops are only an inconvenience if you think of them that way. There’s more work involved in getting a driver’s licence, when you think about it.
- Regarding no ammo: Most people are terrible shots with a pistol – just go to a range and watch people trying shoot at target a mere 10-15 feet away. If I were in a life threatening situation against what I thought was untrained person with a pistol, I figure I could have a good chance of faking them out and surviving.
Now let us assume that I am a violent criminal, facing a housefrau shaking in fright, holding her 357 – I dodge and she does not fire. A violent criminal will NOT be afraid of you and your pistol blunt object or shotgun-club. Violent criminals are often streetwise and pretty good street fighters. And – they might be armed themselves. You pull out your weapon and they pull out theirs – now wield your club.
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I have trained all my four childen in firearm usage and safety. First rule to train your kids: if they are in an area where there is a weapon present, and it has not been cleared (cocked to eject a round in the chamber, and the bore visually inspected) and if no adult is present, they are to RUN from the room and find a responsible adult. All children should be drilled on this, especially kids in the US where there are guns in many homes. They have all shot the .45 by the time they were 10 – they are familiar with its power, and do not see it as a toy.
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I have a gun collection – guns and ammo stored separately, except for the two weapons in my bedroom for self defense. The shotgun is loaded but with a gunlock, the key is nearby but hidden. The .45 is unloaded, but the magazines are hidden nearby. At night, I unlock the box in which I store the .45, and in the morning I relock it. The magazines are never in sight.
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And I drill: getting to the .45, getting to the magazines, getting to the key and the shotgun, getting to the flashlight, etc., and my wife and kids are drilled in the event of a break in or home invasion. It makes all of feel safer, that if God forbid something awful happened, there wouldn’t just be a lot of screaming and freaking out. Hopefully the end would be body bags filled with bad guys.
Of course, I drill at the range with the guns I use for home defense.
The wife read about a home invasion where the family was murdered and she felt fearful and vulnerable. She and the kids feel much safer with all this precaution. (we also drill a couple times year for fire and earthquake – if it is good enough for their school, it is good enough for home).
There’s also nothing more dangerous than an unloaded gun (well, of course, there are a number of things more dangerous, but people get careless if they believe the gun is unloaded) And, if you pull a gun on someone, you’d darn well better be ready to use it.
Also, local laws vary, even within the United States (or, especially within the U.S.), so be sure you know what you’re getting yourself in for. Some places, an intruder in your house is assumed to be there with malice aforethought and you are expected to act accordingly* - the D.A. generally won’t even press charges unless you did something stupid (IANAL). Other places you’re not allowed to defend yourself at all.
You can’t have too much training or too much practice.
My rant with mandating “safe” storage is that there are exceptions all over the place. Abused women trying to protect themselves because police are a joke and restraining orders not worth the paper they’re written on don’t need the added complication of trying to dig out their ammo. They need the NRA to give them training and the cops to fast-track their concealed carry permit.
I bet if I keep going, I can get so far off topic that I don’t remember what the OP was about.
*This doesn’t mean that we blast everyone that comes to the door, we don’t have running gun battles in the street, I sure don’t own anything that’s worth taking a life for, etc. Honestly, a CCW is not a license to kill, “make my day” laws don’t result in spouses getting blasted for coming home late, etc.
If you do ever get one of those fast safes, post a IMHO OK? I’m looking at them too. But, I’m not sure My 6" GP100 will fit in it. Gonna be tight.
Oh. Looked at the site again. Looks like they have more options than they did a year ago.