How foolish would I be to keep a realistic-looking toy BB gun at home to deter intruders?

In My Humble Opinion
21

No, but kids might visit. You or someone you care about might suffer a bout of depression. And people are imperfect and make dumb mistakes. Almost all households are safer without a gun. If you are worried about break ins, get better locks and mend weak points (like large, unreinforced windows) in your home. Consider getting a dog.

https://factually.co/fact-checks/health/us-firearm-deaths-2024-total-291144

58% of all gun-related deaths are suicides. You can prevent most of the accidental deaths with training, but depression is a disease that can strike unexpectedly, and it’s fairly common. And depressed people with a gun in the house are less likely to recover, because it’s just so easy to kill yourself with a gun. (I have been clinically depressed, and I’m not, now. It’s definitely a condition people can recover from.)

And if you want a toy gun to play with, by all means, get one.

22

If they’re breaking into a house that they know is occupied, your life is about to change, perhaps horribly. Make no mistake, you’re talking about a home invasion, not a burglary.

If you want a gun, they’re easy to find here (TX), not that expensive and ranges are everywhere so you can practice. There’s lots of advice, but mine is to get the absolute simplest to operate, with the “hardest to pull” trigger that you can find. Once you’re actually facing a violent home-invasion, your mind regresses and complex operations may be impossible. Trust me on this.

If you don’t want a gun, then consider bear spray. It’s legal to own here, and you’ll find you can buy cans of the stuff with inert contents to practice with. It will most likely end the fight long enough for the police to arrive, and it’s not fatal. Warning: A direct hit to the eyes can cause some serious damage, and will probably cause pain to you as well, just from being in the room.

Whatever you get, you should practice with it.

23

I’d go with the “get a dog” option. Dogs are safer than guns, are good for keeping intruders away when you aren’t home, and are dogs.

Funny cartoon on that.

24

Dogs are great for home protection, but they don’t fit all lifestyles / situations / personalities, and dogs, especially the kind that work in home invasions, get really expensive to keep, compared to guns.

25

And those, and many others, are all great reasons not to keep a gun in the house. If kids will have access to it or anyone in the house, including the OP, is at risk of suicide/homicide, then no, there shouldn’t be a gun in the house. Based on the fact that the OP is even asking this question, I have to assume these aren’t concerns. I’m not fighting the hypothetical, just working with the information provided in the OP.

But that’s not what the question is about. The OP isn’t asking for alternate ways to prevent break ins, they’re asking for advice about a specific one.

But while we’re on (off?) the topic:

Years ago I read an article by someone who interviewed convicted burglars to ask them about how they pick the houses they’re going to rob. Every single one of them stated that if you have a dog, big dog, little dog, any dog at all, it’s on to the next house. That, to them, was an automatic no go.

26

Home invasions are vanishingly rare in real life; burglars normally are looking to avoid contact entirely. And realistically if something like that happens you’d probably end up dead even if you were a trained soldier armed to the teeth.

You just need a dog that’ll make noise. And dogs unlike guns tend to be positive to keep around.

27

Buy an actual gun (save up and buy once, cry once) or some other means of self defense/security (not a toy). It’s the stakes of needing a gun and not having it that matter, not the odds of ever needing it. You’re committed to your personal safety or you aren’t. There is no halfway.

28

If you are committed to to your safety then you don’t want a gun; you’re more likely to kill yourself with it than to ever defend yourself with it. Even the BB gun has the virtue that you are unlikely to be able to suicide with it.

29

No-one disputed that. But the need for a handgun in the house is a home invasion, as well.

30

No? If that’s an actual issue you should be leaving, preferably for anther nation entirely. Trying to fight off a home invasion will just get you killed, real people aren’t action movie heroes.

31

If the home invasion is one guy who wants your stuff and mistakenly thought the house was empty, showing a gun might scare him away. You might succeed in shooting him. Of course, you also might do better staying in the bedroom and calling 911, or slipping out the back door.

32

It’s an old piece of self defense advice to not have a gun, because people with guns tend to get into fights and die instead of avoiding the threat.

33

Yes, I’m pretty sure the unarmed resident has a better chance of escaping unscathed than the armed resident. Not confronting a home invader is a good way of reducing your risk.

Personally, I’d rather lose the family silver than kill a guy. Also, depression is common in my family. I do not own a gun.

34

Damn typos. (Fixed) The worst are not/but/more, which all look similar to swype.

35

And for the love of Pete, get a real dog, not a BB dog.

36

Yeah, a stuffed or robo-dog won’t do much good.

Think about good security locks for the apartment door. And maybe one of those devices like my aunt once had for her apartment door, involving a metal bar that locks into a receptacle inside the apartment and supposedly prevents an intruder from bulling their way through the entrance to get inside.

37

I live in a ranch-style single-family house in NC. My wife and I have several firearms, including handguns, rifles, and shotguns. We often watch true crime series and we have often discussed the potential for home invasions (extremely low) and/or other situations where a firearm might be used. IOW, we’ve done some planning. We also go to the range pretty regularly, so we have some proficiency.

Common sense (and everyone else) tells us that, if we hear an intruder and we are in the bedroom, we should lock ourselves in, call 911, get away from the door, and “hold the fort” until LEOs arrive. A gun might be helpful to cover the bedroom door from inside…just in case. But if someone tried to enter the bedroom after we called 911, I’d probably yell “Get out! I’ve got a gun!” even if I didn’t. I don’t think a BB gun would be a help here.

And if I hear a noise and go checking on it at night, how does the intruder know I have a gun? Do I start flipping on lights and brandishing it? “Look here! A REAL gun…not a toy!” Might as well use a BB gun if you won’t/can’t shoot.

A real home invasion is usually the application of sudden force by the perp(s). In most cases, THEY are the ones who control the situation and end up finding (and taking, possibly using) any firearms.

My easily accessible handguns all have flashlight attachments so I can check the house and areas immediately outside the house without turning on lights, but if the intruder is outside the house I’m going to turn on the lights and I’m pretty confident that will be the end of it. An apartment is different. Again, will a BB gun help? I doubt the intruder would even have a chance to see it. Probably better off to yell, “Call 911!!”

Face it, LEOs would like to apprehend bad guys. Being armed helps. Average citizens would just like to deter criminal acts.

I just don’t see that a BB gun would be any help at all. Plan for different scenarios, including night time intrusion or discovering an intruder in the house when you get home. Make reasonable preparations. If a real firearm is going to be part of your plans, then get trained, practice with it (a lot), and store and maintain it properly.

Meanwhile, my wife and I also have a 110-lb. dog and a 65-lb. dog that are fairly loud when they want to be. Never even felt a need to pick up a firearm for defense in our house or our yard.

38

By most estimates (including the CDC) there is a far greater number of defensive gun uses (most of which don’t involve a shot actually being fired) than gun suicides or gun accidents. Statistics are misleading because what’s statistically true for a population as a whole isn’t exactly true for every person concerned. A mentally ill person is far likelier to kill themselves with a gun than someone who isn’t mentally ill at all. Something happening to someone else somewhere else for one reason or another doesn’t make it meaningfully likelier to personally happen to me merely because I own the same object or engage in the same behavior. This applies whether it’s a gun or a swimming pool or any other object you can own that could possibly harm you. It’s something each person has to personally decide for themselves and assess the risks and benefits and so on rather just relying on misleading statistics. People are individuals with their own minds, natures, lifestyles, etc., not bundles of statistics and odds they can’t affect in any way.

39

That’s actually the most effective way to fight with a baseball bat or baton.

40

Yeah. Even if you had the room to swing the bat, doing so would open yourself up for a stab etc., while also giving plenty of time for the perp to react in any other way.