That’s because you’ve got too many steps. If the purpose of the gun is for home defense, then it should be stored loaded and in the room you sleep in at night, which should be a room with a sturdy door and reliable lock. And the gun safe should have a combination lock.
ETA: I have a carry permit, though I mostly carry at the range and to and from the car now. I’ve thought of carrying more, and I don’t say I never will again, but since I no longer frequent violent neighborhoods as I did when selling door to door, it seems less necessary.
It sounds like you are applying the same “Average person” logic mentioned upthread, as far as being lucky.
I don’t know where you live, but where I live I don’t NEED to walk around carrying a handgun for self defense. The fact that I CAN do that makes me feel safer. Whether I do it or not depends on my mood.
Also, home defense and complicated gun safes do not mix well. Gun, loaded, nightstand. Apply as needed nightly.
Yes, but that “level playing field” is actually unlevel in very significant ways. It favors the young, the aggressive, the muscular, the male, the athletic, and uneven odds (two or more against one). Guns change that balance in a significant way.
I am not saying you (or anyone else) needs to own a gun. But you must understand the equalizing effect firearms give to those who otherwise stand no chance of prevailing in a violent confrontation if you truly want to grasp why many people want to have one around.
People should have the right to own a gun because that gives them the ability to defend themselves if the need arises. I don’t expect I would ever need a gun for defense but things do happen, and when you or your family’s life is in danger, no matter how unlikely that is, you would be glad to have a gun.
By the same token I haven’t had any fires in the house either but I still have smoke alarms and fire extinguishers.
Absolutely. Why not? Why would I bother buying a gun if I was too emotionally fragile to kill someone? And what kind of worthless parent would I be if I was not prepared to use violence in defense of my home and my child?
What kind of a worthless person are you to have a device who’s sole purpose is killing others?
Apparently, pacifists are emotionally fragile and worthless parents.
Considering the number of violent situations I have helped others in (using my brains, not my brawn), I consider myself a pretty good example to others. I have saved at least four lives. I have prevented countless fights. I have helped many people out of bad domestic situations. I don’t own a gun. I do not use violence to solve problems.
Many of those times, I could have gotten myself killed if not badly hurt. And I will grant you that I try to make sure to stay out of those situations if I can now be identified easily or if my kids are there. But guns aren’t the answer. Education, ending poverty and treating each other well is the answer.
That’s the world I want for my kids. Not the one where they look at the people around them constantly wondering who’s going to attack.
Additionally, I have been raped (it’s rape month, had to throw it in). Yeah, it was bad. But most of the time, you are going to be raped by someone you know in a situation where you aren’t going to have a gun. You’re going to be alone with your assailant. No gun’s going to stop that.
If I could go back in time and magically put a gun in my hand while it was happening knowing what I know now, I would not pull the trigger. If I had one without the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I would have pulled the trigger and be living with that for the rest of my life. It would have been worse.
How do you know the intentions of someone who just kicked your door in? Ask them? Wait for them to do something that indicates what they are up to? I do have a gun and if someone forces their way into my house at night they are getting shot. Circumstances permitting, (maybe they are halfway through the window, I have them in my sights and I have some cover or concealment), they may get a warning and a chance to flee. If they kick in my bedroom door I’m emptying the magazine and re-loading. The question shouldn’t be to me. It should be to the intruder - “Are you willing to die for whatever is in that house?” I have zero sympathy when these people are shot. My feelings are little more mixed when it comes to stealing a car out of the driveway. I’d probably just let him go. YMMV.
If it happened I don’t know how I would feel. No one who hasn’t been there REALLY knows. A friend of mine was a fellow SWAT cop and he killed a guy in a perfectly justified shooting. It bothered the shit out him and still does to a lesser extent. Before it happened said that it wouldn’t be a problem. We all say/said that. You just never know.
Pacifists are pathetic, idealistic, narcissistic, optimists who are unable to confront reality and would rather be made into victims than raise a single finger in defense of themselves and their families.
Yes, they are worthless parents. I will not allow my child to suffer in the way that you suffered, or be made a victim by people more powerful than her. Anyone who is unwilling to do the same in defense of their children is the very definition of an unworthy parent.
But, as I see above, you are apparently willing to die or be raped rather than take control of your own life and take responsibility for your own safety… even after you have been made a victim. This is the most astonishingly irrational and irresponsible thing I have ever heard.
I say good luck with that, because apparently it’s not working out for you.
I have been made a victim in a circumstance in which having a gun would have done me absolutely no good. You think I just lay there and took it like a good girl? I fought like hell but I am a small woman who was alone with a large man (that I thought I trusted). Could it happen to my kids? It sure could. That’s a little something called ‘reality.’ The only protection kids have against that is information. Even then, it’s a crap shoot.
Seriously, I am not a true pacifist, I am a ‘fight only if you have to and even then only to get away from the situation not cause grievous harm if that is possible.’
Really, I am the one out there who, when they hear somebody in trouble, goes and helps. I don’t cower in my home and pull out my gun for ‘self-defense.’ I talk people down. I have a gift for it (apparently not in writing judging by how far off the deep end you seem to be going). I get out there. Make sure everything’s okay. Administer first aid where necessary. Give people a place to go if that’s what’s needed. And I am a ‘pathetic, idealistic, narcissistic, optimist.’
Do those sound like the actions of a coward who is to be despised?
There are “moral prig” pacifists; but then there are the people who might be called the “gentles”: they simply cannot bring themselves to do physical harm to others- the instinctive reluctance most people have against killing is absolute with them. I regard this as neither good nor evil in itself, it’s simply the way some people are. As to the OP, one of the first things gun instructors advise people is that if you are not willing to shoot and kill someone if necessary, then you shouldn’t have a gun.
Judging from the posts above, Canadians have a poor grasp of American laws, so here goes: if talking is still an option, you are probably not in a lethal force situation and the use of a gun is not justified. This is the problem most of the anti-gun crowd has. I routinely see speakers claim guns are unnecessary when the situations they describe are not truly life-or-death.
And yes, anyone who is so afraid of guns as you seem to be is a coward in my book. I agree that gun violence is terrible, but at least I confront it rather than letting my fear of it control me.
And you got a first-hand lesson on the effectiveness of kicking, biting, and scratching as self-defense measures. Against a larger, stronger opponent, they are useless. Good thing the man only wanted to rape you, and not strangle you afterwards and toss your body into a ditch, because there was nothing you could have done to stop him.
Now go back to your OP, and understand that home defense is one scenario where you are far, far less likely to be taken by complete surprise than the rape you describe. Why would you assume that in a setting where a larger, stronger man is breaking down your door, a gun would be of no use? In that setting, it’s damned near the only thing that is actually useful! A burglar will run if he sees a gun in your hands. And anyone who doesn’t run - well, that fellow was never a mere burglar in the first place, and that’s the sort of person a gun was intended to be used against.
Then stop arguing like a true pacifist, since you’re not one.
Your desire for everyone to just get along is admirable, and increasing education and social welfare will no doubt reduce the levels of violence in society (which are already falling). But was the man who raped you merely underprivileged and ignorant? Or was he just someone who wanted what he wanted, had the opportunity and the means and the ability to take it, and who didn’t care about the mobile vagina’s welfare because his dick was hard?
Some people simply don’t care about the welfare of others, and they are willing to use force to get what they want. And sometimes what they want is to see other people get hurt, or even die, for their amusement. Those people can only be dealt with by violence. Fortunately, they are rare, but they are also real. What’s wrong with deciding to proactively prepare for the possibility that their path may cross with yours one day?
Back up a might. I think I phrased something very badly.
I like living in a world where getting shot (either accidentally or on purpose) is unlikely to happen to my kids.
As a result of that, I do not have a gun. This increases the risk that if someone decides to break into my home and kill me or my kids that they will be successful.
However, the odds of them getting shot are reduced by a greater amount by most in my country not having a gun that the increase in them getting killed in a home invasion still makes them net safer.
If someone breaks into my home, the first thing I am doing is grabbing the kids and getting out of there. If that’s not possible, we will get to the most defensible spot in the house (master bedroom) and calling the cops with one phone while yelling out the window for help and putting myself between the door and my kids. Frankly, where I live, the odds are pretty good that whoever is there runs off pretty quickly (since we have a high population density and all look out for each other).
It seems really odd to me that I am a bad parent because I think killing people is a bad thing.
