I have mostly lived in small towns, but even in a place that was for quite some time literally “America’s Safest City” we had someone try to break into our home. Fortunately our dog scared them off.
My attitude of it is that there’s a very good chance that I will never be the victim of a home invasion. However, if I happen to be one of the unlucky few, whatever happens will be done and over with long before the police get there. If you think the police can protect you from criminals you are sadly mistaken, and perhaps more than a bit naive. Even at best it can take police 5 to 10 minutes to respond. That doesn’t sound like much, but it doesn’t take very long for someone to break in, hurt you, grab a bunch of your stuff and leave. A friend of mine died exactly that way. Some idiot broke into his house, stabbed him, and stole a bunch of tools. A neighbor heard the commotion and called the police, but my friend was dead long before anyone arrived. They did eventually catch the guy, but that won’t bring my friend back.
Despite that attitude that I have, I don’t really use my guns for protection. They are mostly a hobby, though I ended up checking the target practice option instead of hobby option because the hobby option indicated that they don’t get fired, and I shoot mine fairly often. I do shoot mostly reproduction weapons that are replicas of guns made in the 1700s and 1800s, but they are pretty much exact replicas made with modern machinery instead of being made by hand (which actually makes them a bit different from the real ones because they don’t have the crappy hand filing and beating parts that didn’t fit into submission that you see on real antiques). Let’s face it, a Model 1756 British Infantry musket is hardly the ideal weapon for home defense. However, it must be said that a 5 1/2 foot weapon with a .75 cal. barrel sure does look impressive if someone points it at you, so it would probably make someone think twice. My muskets may be ancient style one-shot weapons that take half a minute to reload, but they were military weapons once upon a time and they are more than capable of killing a person.
I don’t keep my guns loaded. It’s not practical. Unlike a modern gun, once you load a musket you can’t unload it (at least not easily). So, if someone broke in I would have to very quickly unlock the box I keep the powder in and also very quickly load one of the muskets (which is about impossible to do very quickly). If I didn’t have the time to do that then I’d have to point an unloaded musket at the bad guy and hope that it’s large size would be enough to scare him off.
The one nice thing about old style muskets is that you don’t just stick a bullet in them and pull the trigger, so I don’t have to worry about my kids getting into them and hurting themselves or someone else. I do keep the powder and bullets/balls locked up, but even if the kids somehow got into that I don’t think they could figure out how to make the musket actually go bang.
I have absolutely no problem with other folks who keep guns in their homes, whether for self protection or hunting or whatever, as long as they are responsible about it. I also respect people who don’t want anything to do with guns, though I don’t like it if they try to force their opinions on others.
I am also of the opinion that there are a lot of folks out there with a distorted view of gun owners, and a rather unhealthy opinion about guns themselves, fearing them as if they are things of pure evil. I grew up in an atmosphere where guns were perfectly acceptable and weren’t feared, but you had to be responsible with them. I think that people who don’t understand what it means to be responsible with a gun have no business owning one. Note - I’m not trying to start a hijack or a debate here, just trying to explain my attitudes about guns and the reasons behind them since that is what the OP asked for.
ETA: 44 year old male here, married with 3 kids living at home.
Guns were used to kill passing coyotes and annoying magpies.