Shotguns are less likely to lead to fatalities, and they are effective for home protection. I was persuaded by the readers who advised it.
In May I went to my local firearms store to buy a shotgun for my city home (I already have one at our weekend place).
Fortunately the manager intervened just in time. Ken repeatedly yelled at him to go away and warned him that he had a gun. At a motel one night, he was awakened by a man banging on his door, twisting the knob and loudly demanding entry.
Perhaps the most poignant story I heard after my intruder experience came from a trial lawyer (I’ll call him Ken) in Oklahoma. I don’t have or carry a weapon precisely because I worry I’d use it.” I know myself well enough that in moments of concern or high emotion I might very well use a firearm - and bullets are like the angry email you hit send on before thinking more calmly about - they can’t be recalled…. It’s not because I’m not comfortable with firing them, but more likely because I am. He wrote: “I’ve not had an intruder in our home, so don’t have that perspective, but have chosen not to keep a firearm in the house - or carry one at any time. Stanley McChrystal right after the incident. Not included in my piece was a very thoughtful correspondence I had with retired Army Gen. Is my gun ownership irrational or the reasoned act of a neuroscience professor? One thought the essay was a ploy to drive traffic to my academic website. A half-dozen people were mad at me for writing about something they thought was insignificant. Several readers, including active-duty military and police officers, offered the practical advice that a shotgun would be more useful in a home invasion scenario than a handgun. A trained security officer berated me for my hesitation in using the firearm and said I had no right owning one if I was not going to use it. I was lectured to about society’s scum, stand-your-ground laws and the castle doctrine. I became the target of a lot of pent-up frustration at increasing crime rates and homeless people (what do they have to do with it? I wondered).
There is no place for guns in a civil society.” Some tried to shame me with statistics I already knew: How many people die each year shot by their own guns, and how a home with a gun is less safe than a home without one.įrom the other side, I got scolded for not shooting the intruder. Some were angry on philosophical/political grounds: “You have betrayed our shared liberal values by owning a gun. About half scolded me for having a gun in the first place. I received more than 100 emails from angry readers. It forced me to think about the value of a human life, proportional response, and the costs and benefits of avoiding a confrontation. I wrote about the experience for the New York Times in March. I sneaked out of the house and called the police. My first instinct was to grab a loaded handgun and brace myself for a confrontation. I didn’t know his intentions, or whether he was armed, but he seemed intent on breaking in.
One morning last December, while working at my desk at home, I saw an intruder peering into my house, trying windows and doors.