Tony sometimes I don't make myself clear, the deputy was a huge gun advocate like most in this highly rural part of the state. I had one spit his wad of tobacco out the window and tell me a " man has a right to get his aim". I had called them because bullets whistling thru trees were close to our property line, and we had just moved here. I told Jake I'm not staying in this Yosemite Sam town, he said we ain't leaving. There was a V.N. veteran it bothered but he had a bad time in Nam. Gunfire remined him.
I don't mean to offend anyone, but the idea that my neighbors are keeping loaded guns at hand, in the car, etc. gives me a good deal of discomfort. I'm not anti-gun, but I'm just not very comfortable with this. I figure that a good deal of people drawn to weapons aren't actually stable enough to be trusted with them. Even among those who are, there is a non-zero chance that a weapon may be fired accidentally in a stressful situation and additional non-zero chances of accidental discharge when emotions are heightened. The old "familiarity breeds contempt" factors into the handling of loaded weapons. I'm not in a community where we live in fear. Physical attacks and robberies aren't unheard of but they are pretty rare. I suppose I worry less about "the bad guys" than I do those neighbors who may be hugging loaded pistols for security. But that's just me.
It's fascinating that as the number of households with guns has skyrocketed, both crime and accidents have plummeted. Around 2007, not only had the homicide rate in this nation hit record lows (since the FBI started keeping stats in the 60s), but the actual number of murders-by-firearm hit record lows even as our population went from 175 million to over 300 million. The places we don't want to live are where the honest citizenry are disarmed.
First, I'm not offended. Anyone who fears guns and has no knowledge of them should not have one, IMO. Whether or not you are able or want to defend yourself is not my business. I actually know a woman who has said she would rather be shot dead by an intruder than shoot him. I was only speechless for a little while. There is no accounting for taste and she certainly has the freedom in America to choose to be a willing victim. Unfamiliarity with weapons and media scaremongering feeds the fear of guns. For those of us who grew up with them as part of the household they are recognized as a useful tool with a purpose, never to be taken lightly. If you are ever in a situation where a good man or woman with a gun saves your bacon you may change your mind, or maybe not, as you choose. As far as communities where people live in fear, bad happenings are not limited to the ghetto. In fact, if someone wants to invade a home to steal they aren't going to the poor parts of town. We all buy gas and gas stations and convenience stores are where you are most likely to walk into something bad going down.
^^ This. My father was my "instructor" and he was firm with gun safety rules. Also, never allowed us to shoot anything unless we planned to eat it. That's how my brother had a robin for dinner one night. I stuck to beer cans so now I have beer.
My wife was getting threats, so I bought her the gun of her choice. She carried it for a while, but I feared she would hesitate to shoot someone threatening her and the gun would be used against her. I got her a taser-like weapon instead and I have no doubt she would use it against a person who threatened her as it is non-lethal.
Don, you bring up a good alternative, especially for carrying outside the home. Everything gets heavier and we get less stable physically as we get older. A stun gun as an alternative is something to consider. Maybe it would be a better choice for self defense than a gun in some situations.
Without quoting an exact number, my wife and I have several options to deter intruders or defend ourselves when away from home. We can offer a wiide selection of freedom seeds in several sizes from any force determined to destroy freedom. My latest toy is also my first wheel gun. It's a Taurus Judge Public Defender. It can chamber a .410 slug/shot shell or .45 LC. Yes, indeed, the 2A is a beautiful thing. I have a .458 SOCOM I have yet to fire.
I think quite possibly that many of us grew up in a time when most homes had at least a hunting rifle, if not other weapons. Our parents kept them put away in a safe place (like in the back of their bedroom closet) and all children knew we were to never ever even touch a weapon, let alone shoot it until we had been taught how to use one properly. Kids in high school that drove the family pickup to school had the hunting rifles in the back window in the fall, and no one was ever concerned about a school shooting. I chuckled about your brother having a robin for dinner, @Beth Gallagher , but my mom would have probably made me do the same thing if i ever shot one. However, as @Jacob Petersheim pointed out, now we have a lot of people that have guns and have never gone thought the “Parent Gun Training Course” like some of us went through, and they are not all of them safe to be having a weapon. We live in an area where that is true. People drive down the road and shoot out of the car windows as they drive by, or they just go out in their yard and shoot (at the moon?) and with no regard that they are in the middle of a fairly large town and it is not safe to be out there shooting just to be shooting. It does not seem like we have any way to regulate this back to where only responsible people have guns and they are used for protection and not owned by someone high on drugs. It is not always safe to drive down the streets and highways now because of people who have the bad combination of road rage and a gun.
Or leaning up against the wall by the door, which is where a shotgun and a .22 gauge rifle generally were, for different types of varmints, but we still knew to leave them alone as young children.
I read one poster here keeps a shotgun under their bed my handgun is on my nightstand table which one us us will get to their weapon when needed first? Why have a weapon that due to storage is useless to them when it could be your life on the line?