Keeping Guns in the House

I only have the energy to do so much writing tonight, and earlier on tonight, I posted a comment on my friend's blog about my views on guns in the home, it got kind of indepth. So I'm just going make my comment to his blog post, my blog post today. So, here's my post to my friend Nick.

We've talked about this before, of course, but there's a component of my perspective that perhaps I've never shared with you. This is specifically about having guns in your home for protection. Much of this has to do with my religious conviction. Eye for an Eye vs. Turn the other Cheek. Which edict do we follow, whichever we want? What would Jesus do? Some consider that there are plenty of examples of God's vengeance in the bible. But for myself and my family, I have always considered the turn the other cheek approach. In any case where you would likely need a gun to protect yourself, you are almost certainly going to be put in a position where you will have to react to your own fear. Now when it comes to this I am not trying to suggest that there is a right way to deal with fear, but my own choice is to turn the other cheek. If a burglar comes into my house, he can have whatever he wants. I put my trust in God to see his will through in situations like this, my life is in His hands. Material possessions are insured by my homeowner's insurance, my life is insured by my faith. I've had my house burgled and things were stolen, it sucks...but I got over it. In fact, it didn't even take that long to get over it. But if I had a weapon, I don't think I could get over knowing that I shot and possibly killed someone over 'things'...this is my perspective. If I had a gun as a deterrent and it scares the burglar away, then that's obviously the ideal situation for people like yourself who believe that guns save lives, but I believe that it's just as likely that someone breaking into your home might only have a weapon as a contingency in case you do. Therefore it's possible that you run more of a risk of harm or death if you have a gun in your house. But we live in America, the land of choices, where you should be able to exercise your own judgment in protecting your home. So, I believe people should be allowed to arm themselves if they like (provided it's not an Uzi or canon), it's just not for me. (I really don't know enough about conceal and carry laws so I can't really comment about that. Seems unnecessary for people to pack, but if you want to you're going to, legally or not)...