Reply #5: I don't know if it's over the top

[Heddi]

but we have a gun---a .22 rifle. It's basically a bb gun with attitude---probably would do more to piss off an intruder than it would to stop them. Oh well.

When we got the gun, we were living in a very dangerous apartment building---homeless people slept under our building in the wintertime, slept in the bushes that ran next to our building. Our bedroom windows ran from floor to ceiling and it would be quite easy for someone to merely stick their foot through the window and have unfettered access to our home.

We got the gun for safety reasons, and luckily we've never had to use it.

But I would not allow a handgun in my home. Never ever. If handguns were the only guns available, we would have just 'made do' with the 'Beating Stick' we created prior to getting the gun (a 4-inch round solid oak dowell with about 200 screws on the end, sticking out about 1 to 1 1/2 inches).

I don't like handguns. They're far too accessable---and I guess if you're going for home saftey, that can be a plus---but not for me. The gun we have now is long and large, and it can't be 'hidden' under a pillow or accidentally mistaken for something else.

Even though we have no children, nor do we have friends with children who visit our house, the gun is locked and unloaded and hidden well out of reach---of course, now we live 5 floors up in a very secure building, and I don't see the need to use the gun where we are now unless Spiderman or the Human Fly takes to breaking into apartments in our area.

We never got the gun for 'peice of mind'---there is no peice of mind (in my mind) in having a weapon of death in my house. We got it in case the absolute worse thing happened and we needed to defend ourselves. Even when we lived in the old apartment, the gun was never loaded (but the clip was loaded, and kept separately from the gun).

If my husband got a handgun, I probably would leave him--but not SOLELY because he got the handgun, but because for him to get a handgun would mean that his brain had been switched with that of someone else, seeing as he hates having the gun around as much as I do. :)