Originally Posted by
Mendip
I work away a lot and we considered this around 10 years ago when our first daughter was due. Incidentally, we had been burgled once, and had grills on all the windows. The burglars sawed through a grill with a hacksaw. They also pop them off with car jacks. The grills are a deterrent, nothing more.
We discounted getting a gun for the following reasons...
An awful lot of crime is caused by owning a gun - criminals break in to steal the gun. How do they know you have one? If it's to be used as a deterrent then you tell people you have one - otherwise it's no deterrent.
You have to be 100% sure you (your wife) can point the gun at someone and pull the trigger - otherwise you're just handing them a weapon. I don't know if I could pull the trigger until that eventuality happens. I'm pretty sure the wife couldn't - or could hit anything with all the panic that would be going on.
To my mind, if a gun is to be any use you need to keep it loaded under your pillow. If it's locked in a cabinet and not loaded, it's useless. The first thing you will know about a burglar is when they wake you up in bed. The dogs will have been nailed a few days before the burglary (unless you keep them in the house at night - their job is to wake you). I certainly don't want a loaded gun in the house, even more so with kids around. I'm British mind you, and am unfamiliar with guns and am not comfortable around them. You may feel differently.
Is there no reliable family member who can sleep in the house when you're away? Have decent lighting installed around the house. In case of emergency, hit the car panic alarm, or better still, have a house alarm installed. We now have a permanent gardener who sleeps above my workshop - that's huge peace of mind for me. My wife has family in the area who she could call in an emergency, but it would still take several minutes for them to turn up - probably longer on the seven nights of the week they'll be drinking.