About six months before the pandemic hit I traded a Beretta M9 9mm and a Beretta Cheetah 84 .380 and $200.00 for one of the new Beretta M9-A3 9mm. This had nothing to do with Covid/Insurrections/Mass Shootings This is like trading a mid level Ford Mustang and an F-150 Pickup for a Lincoln Navigator
I don’t know anyone who has a weapon intended solely to kill other human beings. If I do, they haven’t mentioned it. I know people who hunt, in season.
I don’t understand the motivation. Never have, never will.
Sure ya did Omar 
I haven’t hunted for many years. Until all of the ammunition disappeared off of the shelves, I spent my time with my handguns shooting small holes in pieces of paper from increasing distances under very safe and controlled conditions.
You can kill a man with a baseball bat or a golf club.
You can kill people all sorts of ways. But why the hell would you? Even when I lived in the ghetto I didn’t feel like I needed a gun, I just needed to stay alert. In all the dangerous situations I’ve ever been in, a gun would not have helped. Quite the opposite.
One of my friends bought a handgun and a shotgun for self-defense last year, when the grim reality of the pandemic lockdowns became apparent, and anti-Asian sentiment was on the rise. My brother bought a handgun and two assault rifles, but I think it’s more because he’s turning into a gun nut, rather than any reasons related to self-defense.
I would have bought a handgun last year too, but my wife is adamantly opposed to having guns of any type in the household, and she gets her way in our den 
Neither of which I own either.
If needed for home defense I’ll rile up my Siamese and fling her spitting mad at the miscreant and then I’d run away in the ensuing mayhem.
Have never bought one myself, but I applied for a permit to buy a handgun, just to make sure my record was clean. It was. The Preamble to the bill of rights said the ten amendments (including the Second) were to guard against the misconstruction of the Constitution. Which gets misconstrued all over the place. If I ever feel a need for a gun, it will be for that reason.
I don’t need a gun. I have a dog.
While I have, years ago, enjoyed target sports using other people’s equipment, it wasn’t enough enjoyment to buy anything myself. I don’t even know where I could go nearby to use it.
Same here. I feel like if I’m going to own a gun for home defense purposes, then I need to achieve and maintain proficiency in its use and I need to be well-versed in the rules of engagement. Being a gun enthusiast is kind of a prerequisite for those things, and while I’ve enjoyed shooting in the past, I’m not any sort of gun enthusiast.
I live in a low-crime area, and while the threat of a home invasion is real and non-zero, it’s pretty damn low. The expected value of gun ownership for me is, under these circumstances, vanishingly small.
Same here. In fact, I worked in Iraq during the war, sometimes traveling by myself, and I didn’t carry a gun.
I got my wife’s permission to buy an M&P15-22 for Christmas 2019 but I screwed around filing for my silencer permit and couldn’t get it in time for the family vacation. I’m thinking about getting off my ass this year to get the silencer so hopefully I’ll have it for Christmas this year.
The last gun for me was my semi-auto 20 gauge 4 years ago. It’d be pretty worthless for any of the home-defense / rioting shooting I hear people talk about.
I don’t know. I have a friend who had a couple of firearms (2 inherited .22 LR bolts and a .22LR Pistol he purchased) that we took target to target shooting together before he moved. Right before the lockdowns, and due to the unrest, he was planning on buying a 12g Remington 870 for defense. However, so was everyone else in the world, and he was unable to do so. Right now, he is of multiple minds - he’d still feel safer with it, but in his opinion, a firearm is about deterrence, not absolute lethality. So he’s more or less content about the .22 Semi atuo pistol. If it’s enough to stop someone from continuing a break in (I mean, it’s sub-optimally lethal, but I still don’t want to be shot with a .22), then it gets the job done.
While I disagree in part (if I feel the situation merits using a firearm, I’m going to use something I believe will stop the situation, otherwise I am gonna rabbit!), I feel he is correct that a firearm regardless of caliber can be an effective deterrent including your M&P and the 20g.
The M&P would be a scary gun. Especially with a silencer so if the goal was intimidation it would be a good first choice but I’m only going to buy subsonic ammo for it since the goal is enjoyable target shooting without hearing protection and less annoyance for the family not shooting. I’m sure it would still be lethal but my purposes would make it as unlethal as possible.
As for the shotgun again sue shooting someone hurts so anything that breaks the skin will act as a deterrent like the pellet gun above but a long barrel with 3 shots it close to as sub optimal as you could get.
I don’t worry about home defense in my gun selection if that ever becomes a concern we’ll just leave. My uncle was a FFL dealer when I was younger and owned a collection of uzis as well as other full auto weapons. His philosophy was each person needed to be shot a minimum of three times (2 center of mass and once in the head) and he should expect 5 men fire teams in body armor so 15 round magazines were a minimum in his mind. I figure if I’ve gotten to the point people in body armor are going to invaded my home I’ve done something very wrong long before that point.
While nice I think that the most intimidating sound that a home invader can hear is the sound of a shotgun being pumped. It elicits a Pavlov’s dog reaction in just about everyone who hears it in close proximity. That run for your life feeling.
That would be my next choice for home defense. Maybe I’ll start going to gun auctions and look.
Pumps are just shitty to shoot though. I guess you could leave it unloaded and just pump it to scare people but they’ve got to be closer then I’d want to hear it.
How did I know that this thread would be about men getting super excited about the details of their guns?
I’ve bought two shotguns in the last two years to go along with a rather large collection. I rarely shoot them; I just like having them.
Just an anecdotal aside, I was speaking to my better half about this thread (and she should get an account but I digress). She mentioned one of her best friends from college, who is African-American, did end up getting a pistol for the first time after the ‘black-bag’ incidents during the BLM protests. Apparently between that and the Breonna Tayler police shooting, she doesn’t feel safe depending on Police anymore and would rather defend herself instead of calling the cops in a home defense scenario.