Bam. Spot on.

A little once-removed personal experience with this -- someone I know had a friend who was bragging about the pistol he was keeping for home protection. He was taking a strong stance about his 2A right to defend his property during a conversation. The person I know brought up the point that I did, mentioning that the statistics show that someone in the home is more likely to be injured with a gun in the house than it is to be used for protective measures. The person dismissed that as nonsense. Less than a year later, that person's teenage son got ahold of his poorly-secured handgun and accidentally shot himself in front of his friend.

Another kid I knew in middle school, a couple of years younger than me in my brother's class, accidentally shot and killed his friend in a similar circumstance.

Have at it if the pistol brings comfort, but the statistics show otherwise and I have no comfort with relying on one for protection when the greater chance is that someone I love or know gets shot instead. I'd rather have the security of knowing my kids will be safe and that my rifle & shotgun will be very secure until they're needed to put venison and turkey in my freezer.

I'm not suggesting you do so.


That's fine, but it is never a good idea to do so based on false premises.

FWIW, I have never worried about a break-in. I live in a rural area in a home that does not look appealing to a would-be criminal. I have 3 dogs and an alarm system. I live in an area with an extremely low crime rate. Sounds like you do as well, which would support your comfort level.

However, despite my proximity to the PD (1.5 miles), the response time of the local PD never enters into the equation when determining my comfort level. I do not think it ever should for anyone.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Well that must make your spouse and children feel all warm and fuzzy.

Expensive house. Expensive security system and lights.

I have positively zero concern re. shooting myself or a family member. I do understand that kinda thing happens, but the world is full of idiots. I have strong feelings re. not being part of that group.

My kids, or more accurately their friends, aren't going to get hurt by my weapons. I keep them locked up. I control that variable. When I grew up, almost every home had rifles over the fireplace mantal, and ammo readily available. Our fathers taught us to be safe with firearms and it all worked out. Heck. every other pickup had rifle in a back window rack. Many of those pickups were in the school parking lot. This anxiety re. firearms would have made my little town howl with laughter. Our teenage boys have all been to the various ranges in the area many times and fired both rifles and pistols. 14yr old #1 son and I were at a range a couple weeks ago. He wanted to learn how to double-tap, that being a big deal in the video game world (sigh).

People learning about my weapons and breaking into the house to steal them. If they are willing to brave the dogs in order to get to the attic, they deserve anything they find.

I grew up in a world where everyone had weapons in the home. It's hard for me to relate to people that are anxious about this idea. Might as well be anxious about having a stove in the home. Go look up the stats re. kids drowning in pools. Make weapons in the home look like nothing.

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Like I said, I'm not going to tell anyone how to protect their family in their own home. But I would venture that everyone "has strong feelings' about not accidentally letting people get hurt with their weapons, and many feel like they "control the variable" with locks and such, right up until the point where they don't.

I grew up with (unsecured) guns in the house too, and it worked out fine for my brothers and me. It doesn't always work out that way, even for families where gun safety is taught. The fact that you can't relate to people being anxious about the idea is a little strange to me.

Lastly, if you have such fierce dogs that they'll rip anyone apart who tries to get in the house, why do you need a gun...? :)

Anyway, I'm not trying to be a jerk about this and I respect that you're going to protect the house the way you see fit.

Different times, indeed. I have never been hunting (nor do I have any interest in doing so), but damn near everyone around me went deer and duck hunting. Thus, there were shotguns all over the place. I never felt any interest in touching them and never had a friend who would ever consider pulling them out of the gun cabinet.

But, I also never had first-person shooter video games glorifying firearms. I never had Airsoft guns that looked damn close to the real thing.

That said, I also grew up the son of an FBI agent. At a very young age, he sat me down and talked to me about guns. He then pulled out pictures of a shooting victim so I could see what happened in real life. It made an impression. Dad carried a gun every day and had a small arsenal locked in his bureau-issued car. I never considered touching any of them because of (a) the respect for firearms he taught me and (b) the beatin' that would happen as a result.

But, kids today ain't like us.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I live in Canada. We don't have any guns.

It's not something I've ever really thought about. We've always had dogs (Labrador Retrievers), they are usually up and barking their heads off and rushing to the front or any door, at the slightest noise at the doors!

That's our "alarm". I've read somewhere, that having a dog, is probably the best line of "defense" for this sort of thing, because, most perps will have staked things out and will move-on from the houses/properties where they know, dogs are!

Of course they don't know that our Labs would likely just lick them, who ever comes in - that's about as "vicious" as they will get after all the noise, fury and bedlam of the barking!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I think this is a good point — a changed culture in many ways.

When I was in high school, it wasn’t a problem to bring a gun into the school for certain events. That was 20 years ago. It was a relatively rural area, now is suburbia, and hunting was common. Guns were, by and large, viewed as tools for that. People often grew up either around guns directly or in some familial or friend indirect way, nearly always with the gun as a tool mentality.

And the NRA’s message was patently different then, at least as I recall it.

It seems that today there are more and more people who never grew up around guns as tools who think they need a gun as a weapon or method of defense. That mindset, removed from the appreciation and experience of what a gun is and can do, can be ignorant and cavalier. An appreciation of what a gun is, can do, and taking the time to gain that experience & responsibility just isn’t ingrained in our society anymore. I’m truly more terrified of some law-abiding, protection-hungry idiot who’s never been around guns obtaining a pistol and CC permit than I am of some petty thief/home burglar, because the vigilante mindset is dangerous when removed from experience of how to truly handle their weapon. And, unfortunately, it feels like it’s more and more of those people crying about their “rights” when they don’t themselves understand the real power of the thing they’re fighting for, as they advocate for a theory removed from responsibility of the actual thing. It’s flippant and as ignorant as those who call for a ban on all guns or gun-related companies. (Case in point — the idiots now boycotting CamelBak, Giro, Blackburn, and Bell for being sister companies of a gun manufacturer.)

Doesn’t mean I invite anyone’s death. But it does mean that life is short and precious while here, so I’d rather enjoy the hell out of it instead of withering moments away in worry of what cannot actually be controlled anyway or stuck in fear of something happening. Embracing the fact that death is going to happen and ultimately none of us are individually important to humankind’s and Earth’s existence diminishes much of that fear to its rightful place of nothing.

Getting a little off topic from the OP of having a plan. But I agree with your comments here regarding untrained and stupid people being able to buy a handgun, obtain a cc permit and suddenly thinking they are sheriff Bullock and can intervene in somebody else’s problem. I am not going to draw my edc and prevent a holdup at the convenience store unless my life is in jeopardy.

And good point on the idiots boycotting Giro etc. because they have a parent company with a subsidiary in firearms or ammunition.

Re. control the variables right up until they don't. Agreed. Can't be helped.

Re. I can't relate to people who are anxious about guns in the home. In an absolute sense, sure, I can relate. But in a relative sense, it's harder to understand. Take a look at the deaths caused by backyard pools vs. guns. Then factor in the fact that almost everyone killed by a gun is a bad guy. The stats re. kids killed by guns are almost all teenage druggies and gangbangers. So weigh in your mind the relative danger re. backyard pools vs. guns in the home to innocent kids. Pools are helaciously more dangerous. Yet, they don't create nearly the anxiety that guns do.

One of my subordinates works 3000mi away at one of our California sites. He came out to visit. My shop traditionally takes visitors to the local range, so that was the plan. None of us shoot very often, a couple times/yr probably, but it's a "different thing" to do to make a visitor's trip to our shop memorable.

As the day approached the guy got more and more anxious. He was stressed out and not sleeping. We didn't know any of this tho. The day we were going to go to the range he was shaking and white with fear. So we didn't go. Would that sort of extreme anxiety be perceived as a normal reaction to a backyard pool, prob a 100x more deadly to innocent children? That's an example of anxiety re. weapons in the home to be way out of proportion with the trouble they actually cause.

Re. why have the guns if we have scary dogs. The purpose of the guns isn't home defense, they are just an occasional hobby. The last time I was serious about shooting was 15yrs ago. That said, I'm certainly obligated to teach the boys firearm safety, so I'd have guns no matter the scenario. Likewise, the purpose of the dogs isn't home defense, they're just pets. The Dog Pound told us that the pitbull was a "boxer mix" puppy. It was later that I came to realize that pretty much every dog at the Pound was a pitbull.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

I know labs are thick in the head, but...

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"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

<<Re. I can't relate to people who are anxious about guns in the home. In an absolute sense, sure, I can relate. But in a relative sense, it's harder to understand. Take a look at the deaths caused by backyard pools vs. guns. Then factor in the fact that almost everyone killed by a gun is a bad guy. The stats re. kids killed by guns are almost all teenage druggies and gangbangers. So weigh in your mind the relative danger re. backyard pools vs. guns in the home to innocent kids. Pools are helaciously more dangerous. Yet, they don't create nearly the anxiety that guns do. >>


Your initial comparison was to fire insurance, and then you switched to backyard pools (perhaps because you didn't like my comparisons on how insurance policies are less likely to be misused in a deadly way). They're completely different things, and while neither is a perfect comparison to having a gun next to the bed in case of intruders, the insurance policy is way closer than a pool. But...yes, there is a level of comfort with pools that there isn't with guns, notwithstanding the fact that pools can be deadly. If that's the point you're trying to make, fine, point taken. It doesn't change the fact that guns in the house raise the statistical risk of people in the house getting hurt with the gun.


Re: everyone killed by a gun is a bad guy - that may be true when talking about all gun murders, but it is not true when talking about people harmed from firearms in a home. There the people killed tend to be spouses who have the mother of all arguments with a partner and one of them goes for a gun, or it's kids who get hold of guns that aren't properly stored.


<<None of us shoot very often, a couple times/yr probably, but it's a "different thing" to do to make a visitor's trip to our shop memorable.

As the day approached the guy got more and more anxious. He was stressed out and not sleeping. We didn't know any of this tho. The day we were going to go to the range he was shaking and white with fear. So we didn't go. Would that sort of extreme anxiety be perceived as a normal reaction to a backyard pool, prob a 100x more deadly to innocent children? That's an example of anxiety re. weapons in the home to be way out of proportion with the trouble they actually cause.>>

That is strange and very much out at the end of bell curve, and I don't think it's a fair example of the 'anxiety' that people have about guns. Unrelated point, if I only shot a couple times a year, personally I'd be even more 'anxious' (in a not shaking with fear way, but just generally worried) about having a gun next to the bed in case of home invasion. If that's really the plan when you hear a bump in the night, I think you'd better have practiced a whole lot with the gun that you're going to be pointing around your house. But that's just me.

These statistics, on both sides and to the extent that they're accurate, don't really have much use for someone who's making a decision on how to best protect the home.

Statistics for people harmed by a gun owned in the house most likely lump irresponsible gun owners with those gun owners who take reasonable precautions such a locking up the gun, keeping bullets separate, getting the proper training, etc.

Likewise, the likelihood of a home invasion or even simple burglary vary significantly from neighborhood and from house to house, and there are lots of things that a homeowner can do to reduce those risks.

The decision re. how to protect your home is an easy one. A big dog. Guns don't wag their tail with excitement and lick your face unconditional love every time you come home.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

" Then factor in the fact that almost everyone killed by a gun is a bad guy."

You won't like this but it is certainly something that has to be factored in when considering a gun in the house, there are nearly twice as many suicides by gun as there are homicides of all sorts. Sure a lot of people will kill themselves no matter what method they need to use, but a gun is much quicker and harder to back out of than things like pills.


And gun ownership correlates with suicide rates. And suicide attempts by gun are 90% successful versus 3% with drugs and cutting, https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/178/6/946/111054

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I know labs are thick in the head, but...

LOL. Thank you - Typo

I've fixed it.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

So what brings this up?

Order a pizza recently and decide not to tip the delivery guy?

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

I was coming back from a jog around 6 AM one morning. I left my garage door open when I went for a run.

As I'm getting close to the house, i saw a garage light open. I thought my neighbor was up early.

As I got closer, I realized it was MY garage. Who the f@#$ is in my garage????

I walked up behind this guy and yelled, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY GARAGE?!?"

He had a quick story about visiting family, out for a walk, saw kids messing around in my garage. He was so quick with the story, I bought it for a couple seconds. I suggested I go inside, get my phone, and lets go find these kids.
Obviously he didn't wait for me. I hopped in my car and found him getting into a car. I had the cops on the phone. I asked him to wait so he could tell the cops about the kids. He knew I was on to him and hauled ass.
Took the cops 45 minutes to show up.

Had I known the cops would take 45 minutes, I wish I would have crushed him like a bug when I first walked up on him.

Nope, our clients are all top-notch folks. As I said, the break-in happened at our home and was indeed a random private residence intrusion. There's a somewhat sketchy apartment/condo complex not too far from our neighborhood and it was suspected that these little assholes lived there and were simply working their way through our neighborhood looking for unlocked doors/windows. They happened to get lucky at our house. Talking to the officer who responded to our house, it was pretty clear that they knew where the problem was coming from and had eyes on it.

Wife's wallet was found the next day inbetween our our house and the apt. complex and mine was found near a convenience store not far away after the snow melted and uncovered it. Nothing missing but the little bit of cash we had in them.

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com