Off-topic: Something for home defense?

[2genewb]

Originally Posted by i should never have posted this, but it's too late now

i've had a gun in my mouth and one in between my testicles while being robbed. i can honestly say that if i were the best shot in the world, locked, loaded and with the safety off i would have only been a statistic and a cause for remorse for family members. the third guy holding and standing back would have made sure of that if the other two failed.

i've muscled 5 intruders out of my home single handedly. 2 of them were packing. i didn't need a firearm for that and having one would have put me at a disadvantage because i would have felt the need to access it.

i've had a pistol pulled on me in a busy city street and knocked the guy clear out of his boots.

my son is well trained at 7 yrs old and can pick off a jittery squirrel with a BB gun at over 10 yards with pretty good accuracy. i too was raised with locked and loaded pistols in the house and therefore am very strict about what is what and how to act. there's no question about my place over my children... just about their curiosity and the fact that one incident with a firearm is final, plain and simple.

i was trained with a 22 long rifle at age six and have an entire family full of military and ex military from green beret to red beret to recon to WWII to vietnam to iraq/afghanistan vets. weapons safety and tactics is almost a weekly event. there's only one person in my family who's ever fired a weapon whom cannot score expert on at least a couple weapons. it's not me...

i am an advocate for gun safety and home protection. however, there's a way to go about it and a way not to. having a firearm readily available and accessible for use in a home with children is absolutely not the way to go about it no matter how well you think you've trained your children. there's no way around the fact that having a firearm in the home readily accessible and ready for action only increases the chances that a firearm will be used in the home... and possibly by children... who no matter what you do are curious.

there's also no way you can deny that if you have a kitchen, you have sharp knifes the children have unfettered access to. the argument about a sharp knife is useless if you've ever actually prepared a home cooked meal for your children.

now, i see no reason not to have a firearm ready in the home as a secondary or third tier form of home defense. i do, however see absolutely nothing logical or intelligent about having it readily accessible and fire-able at a moments notice with the exception that it's put away correctly. if it's locked in a proper safe, you're simply not getting to it in a timely manner. no other way around it. this introduces the necessity for a primary means of protection. thinking a bat is sufficient is laughable as far as i'm concerned, but the right knife could certainly bridge that gap between "there's a perp downstairs" and "there's a perp in the room".

as far as i'm concerned, given the nature of the beast and the curiosity of a child at any age what-so-ever, anyone who thinks they can train the curiosity out of their children to the point any child isn't eventually going to handle their readily accessible firearm when they're not aware is completely delusional. my grand daddy grew up in a home with access and lived through it... but he certainly has stories of when he played. same thing with my pop and my uncle. same with mom. same with my brother and i. we all knew not to fire them, but something could have happened at any time. heck... it took my brother 22 years before he decided to do what he did. nobody, and i mean absolutely nobody would have even entertained the thought that what he did was even remotely possible at that point... but it happened... and now he's gone because of it.

so... yeah... brian... i completely understand your stance and actually agree that honest citizens should be armed or the criminals have the upper hand. but i think in a home with children of any age (8 - 80) should have not only the children trained and knowledgeable, but have tiers to it's defense strategy. it should start with either a good alarm system or slightly lethal and readily accessible in the event lethal is the purpose and move up to a fire safe that's nearly un-crackable that harbors anything you choose short of nuclear war heads. just don't go picking up something you need a push rod and black powder for.

i know what you do is your choice and this is simply my opinion, but by all means... think sincerely of the children first... and your right and/or possible need to bare arms second.

[TexasSP]

Originally Posted by PBO

Are you kidding? this a public forum where we discuss 'issues'. What's wrong an opinion that's different to yours?

You missed my point. Bigsteel basically addressed it so I will leave it at that. Too many people running around trying to legislate what others do. This goes for both sides of the spectrum.

Originally Posted by 2genewb

i've had a gun in my mouth and one in between my testicles while being robbed. i can honestly say that if i were the best shot in the world, locked, loaded and with the safety off i would have only been a statistic and a cause for remorse for family members. the third guy holding and standing back would have made sure of that if the other two failed.

i've muscled 5 intruders out of my home single handedly. 2 of them were packing. i didn't need a firearm for that and having one would have put me at a disadvantage because i would have felt the need to access it.

i've had a pistol pulled on me in a busy city street and knocked the guy clear out of his boots.

my son is well trained at 7 yrs old and can pick off a jittery squirrel with a BB gun at over 10 yards with pretty good accuracy. i too was raised with locked and loaded pistols in the house and therefore am very strict about what is what and how to act. there's no question about my place over my children... just about their curiosity and the fact that one incident with a firearm is final, plain and simple.

i was trained with a 22 long rifle at age six and have an entire family full of military and ex military from green beret to red beret to recon to WWII to vietnam to iraq/afghanistan vets. weapons safety and tactics is almost a weekly event. there's only one person in my family who's ever fired a weapon whom cannot score expert on at least a couple weapons. it's not me...

i am an advocate for gun safety and home protection. however, there's a way to go about it and a way not to. having a firearm readily available and accessible for use in a home with children is absolutely not the way to go about it no matter how well you think you've trained your children. there's no way around the fact that having a firearm in the home readily accessible and ready for action only increases the chances that a firearm will be used in the home... and possibly by children... who no matter what you do are curious.

there's also no way you can deny that if you have a kitchen, you have sharp knifes the children have unfettered access to. the argument about a sharp knife is useless if you've ever actually prepared a home cooked meal for your children.

now, i see no reason not to have a firearm ready in the home as a secondary or third tier form of home defense. i do, however see absolutely nothing logical or intelligent about having it readily accessible and fire-able at a moments notice with the exception that it's put away correctly. if it's locked in a proper safe, you're simply not getting to it in a timely manner. no other way around it. this introduces the necessity for a primary means of protection. thinking a bat is sufficient is laughable as far as i'm concerned, but the right knife could certainly bridge that gap between "there's a perp downstairs" and "there's a perp in the room".

as far as i'm concerned, given the nature of the beast and the curiosity of a child at any age what-so-ever, anyone who thinks they can train the curiosity out of their children to the point any child isn't eventually going to handle their readily accessible firearm when they're not aware is completely delusional. my grand daddy grew up in a home with access and lived through it... but he certainly has stories of when he played. same thing with my pop and my uncle. same with mom. same with my brother and i. we all knew not to fire them, but something could have happened at any time. heck... it took my brother 22 years before he decided to do what he did. nobody, and i mean absolutely nobody would have even entertained the thought that what he did was even remotely possible at that point... but it happened... and now he's gone because of it.

so... yeah... brian... i completely understand your stance and actually agree that honest citizens should be armed or the criminals have the upper hand. but i think in a home with children of any age (8 - 80) should have not only the children trained and knowledgeable, but have tiers to it's defense strategy. it should start with either a good alarm system or slightly lethal and readily accessible in the event lethal is the purpose and move up to a fire safe that's nearly un-crackable that harbors anything you choose short of nuclear war heads. just don't go picking up something you need a push rod and black powder for.

i know what you do is your choice and this is simply my opinion, but by all means... think sincerely of the children first... and your right and/or possible need to bare arms second.

Sorry, but I call BS on your post. You can pretend to be Billy Bad Ass all you want but seriously, I don't believe one word of it.

You can be pissed all you want, but anyone over the age of 2 should realize making claims like you have over the internet is stupid. Especially when you haven't been here long enough to lend any kind of real credibility to yourself.

As far as home alarms go, they are only good for alerting the home owner. Any law enforcement officer will tell you home alarms are always lowest priority. My alarm was on when my house got robbed several months back, the sheriff's department was on site 45 minutes later.

[2genewb]

i'm not pissed at all. call bs all you want. i'm a grown man with witnesses to all of those accounts, not some 14 yr old finally let loose behind a keyboard. either way, your response is exactly what i expected of you since it's the same as mine would be. i can respect that.

you are absolutely correct about the home security. notice i didn't mention silent alarm. as far as i'm concerned, there's 2 main reasons for home security. one is the loud alarming sound they're capable of. the second is that they're capable of alerting the authorities faster than a sleeping homeowner in the event of a fire when a couple minutes can be critical. in this instance they can startle and possibly scare away some would be robbers while buying billy bad ass who thinks a gun solves everything the needed time to lock and load.

there's no difference between billy bad ass that thinks a gun solves his troubles and billy bad ass who thinks he can do without it. in this case, i'm not buying it either.

[PBO]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

You missed my point. Bigsteel basically addressed it so I will leave it at .

Ah OK, I'm not sure I could have got it...I don't follow every issue in the US. Thanks for the heads up Bigsteel

[TexasSP]

Just so everyone understands my guns don't sit in the open where anyone can just grab hold. They are secured and I will leave it at that. No one should leave their guns unsecured period.

PBO, my issue is constant legislation. We have people trying to have laws passed where the government can take their kids if they're over weight. People are trying to constantly lobby to have laws passed to control actions of others. It has gotten out of control. I am a person that wants less government no matter which side is in charge. I don't trust anyone with ultimate power and control.

[Finnster]

Originally Posted by BIG-block

Firstly I respect everyone's opinion be it pro or against guns. Bellow is just my opinion and how I think on the subject.

I love guns but would never have one loaded under my pillow or carry on me as protection. In fact if someone broke into my house to rob me or mugg me in the street with a gun, first thing I would say is "Take what ever you want man. Here is my wallet too". I think that pulling a gun on someone who has a gun already in their hands would not play out well. Thats why I don't think of guns as much of a defense.....{snip}...

Your post mirrors my thoughts precisely.

Originally Posted by TexasSP

Just so everyone understands my guns don't sit in the open where anyone can just grab hold. They are secured and I will leave it at that. No one should leave their guns unsecured period.

PBO, my issue is constant legislation. We have people trying to have laws passed where the government can take their kids if they're over weight. People are trying to constantly lobby to have laws passed to control actions of others. It has gotten out of control. I am a person that wants less government no matter which side is in charge. I don't trust anyone with ultimate power and control.

I wouldn't get too worked up in here about legislation. I don't think anyone was proposing any public policy measures, and like it would matter anyway as I don't think anyone in here is a member of Congress. (Being there is a general lack of shirtless photos and gay date trolling)

Besides, all the gun control fights were done in the 90's. There hasn't been any serious federal legislation in a long time. No one is really pushing to reinstate the assault weapons ban, we've had a lot of high profile mass shootings and no action as come out of it. Even a member of Congress was shot in the head and nobody really pushed for any new laws. There were some grumblings about limiting the size of handgun clips, but even that was pretty well squashed by the Democratic leadership and no bills were ever even crafted for a vote. Fighting about gun control and who got blown where were luxuries of another era where such trivialities were the biggest problems we had. Times are different, and I know the D's want no part of starting the fight again with the R's.

I think we can point to extremists on both sides who want to pass all sorts of Big Brother laws, but no one is really listening to them nor have a credible plan to get something passed. But that's really beside the matter...

And just so everyone understands, I didn't get the guns out a bunch of times. (Well maybe the BB guns quite a bit...) It was still one or two more times than I'd ever want my kids getting into them, no matter their training. Our training just taught us how to do stupid stuff more safely.

Point was me and most my friends got into all sorts of trouble doing things we knew damn well we shouldn't have been doing and most of the time our parents had no clue. I don't think I was exceptionally sneaky or clever about it. I fully expect my kids to be in all sorts of stuff they'll try to get away with as they get older.

For me, the cost/benefit just doesn't add up, but everyone's got to make thier own choice

Originally Posted by TexasSP

Just so everyone understands my guns don't sit in the open where anyone can just grab hold. They are secured and I will leave it at that. No one should leave their guns unsecured period.

PBO, my issue is constant legislation. We have people trying to have laws passed where the government can take their kids if they're over weight. People are trying to constantly lobby to have laws passed to control actions of others. It has gotten out of control. I am a person that wants less government no matter which side is in charge. I don't trust anyone with ultimate power and control.

Tex I hope you weren't thinking that my post was labeling you as an irresponsible gun owner. Couldn't be further from the truth. Just saying that people should be given a bit more freedom to do what they want in their own house and raise their kids the way they want. I think we more than agree on that point.
I live in Australia's wonderful state of Victoria which is know as being a "Nanny state". There is always some public servant or politician trying to tell us how we should live. It really pisses me off beyond words sometimes so I know where you are coming from. Also just like you mentioned about overweight kids, we had a similar thing happen here. There was a lot of talk about it and even talk of charging parents with child neglect. WTF? If they brought something in like that when I was a kid they would have locked my parents up and thrown away the key. I was almost as wide as I was tall and my head was almost always inside the fridge. LOL.

[hemicuda11]

Glad I don't have kids, bought the wife a walther p22 a couple years ago, she loves it. Great pistol for a beginner, now she wants a ppk.

[gtxracer]

Originally Posted by BrianG

I've been looking for some kind of weapon for home defense. First, I was going to get a handgun, but after reading a bit about this topic, many people prefer a shorter shotgun instead. Makes sense really; not as much potential for overpenetration, ammo is pretty cheap, gun is pretty simple/basic and relatively inexpensive.

So, my question is; out of all the shotguns out there, does anyone have any personal experience? Off the top of my head, I'd want a shorter shotgun for some maneuverability, able to hold as many shells as possible, be reliable, and inexpensive. Any thoughts?

In my experience, your time behind the trigger matters more than what firearm you're holding. Might wanna look into some bean bag shells if you're not too keen on sluggin a dude in your hallway.