Originally Posted by zhurdan

Yeah, Bear Spray. It's better than someone who may not want to put the time in to shoot safely owning a gun and accidentally shooting themselves or someone else because they only bought one box of bullets with the gun and think they can defend themselves.

Perhaps you've never heard of it being called bear spray. It's just a bigger can, with a handle and trigger on it, that is "supposed" to be stronger than regular pepper spray. It very well may be a marketing gimmick, but the sheer volume of the can could come in handy. They are usually about as big as a can of hair (hahah hair:bear) spray and have a spray range of about 20 yards.

Zhur

LOL hell when I worked for Ramsey Outdoors we sold ones that looked like mini-fire extinguishers

This seems to happen a lot here. Somehow old threads are started back up. I did not even notice that the original post was from April.

Fire off a full can of bear spray in your apartment and see how that goes? That would be fun to live in for the end of the lease, say goodbye to the security deposit

Or, since the OP said that he didn't wanna kill a bad guy, just forget the bear spray and take pictures as the BG rapes and kills your wife. Bear spray is a small price to pay vs. not doing anything at all if a BG broke into your home. I don't know about you, but the security deposit isn't worth anything close to the life of my wife, um.. most of the time. hehe

Zhur

Originally Posted by zhurdan

Perhaps you've never heard of it being called bear spray. It's just a bigger can, with a handle and trigger on it, that is "supposed" to be stronger than regular pepper spray. It very well may be a marketing gimmick, but the sheer volume of the can could come in handy. They are usually about as big as a can of hair (hahah hair:bear) spray and have a spray range of about 20 yards.

I've seen one of these in action on an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, I know that may sound corny but Duane Chapman sprayed a guy up close and the spray was overwhelming.

I actually had an almost identical question to the original poster, and was delighted to see this thread.

I'm looking at a handgun for home/self defense for both myself and my wife to shoot. we are about the same height (5'10" and 5'8" respectively), are both very slender (we both hover around 135 so we are not big and strong by any reckoning) and both of us have small hands. I'm definitely gonna take the advice on this thread and not make any decision until we've spent some time at the range (neither of us has ever shot a gun), but I am interested as to what we should be looking at generally. price is an issue as far as purchase, but in the long run, I'd rather have a reliable weapon and am willing to spend more to get it. as well, I imagine we'll be shooting for pleasure at ranges, so a gun that is also fun to shoot that we can grow with is a good thing.

We're looking at semiautomatic, and I don't think we have the need for a subcompact but maybe a standard would be too much? 9mm seems to be the caliber that we'd be looking at, and I've been recommended the Glock 19.

thanks if anyone has any input, I sincerely hope I'm not being redundant.

as far as bear spray and all that (which did make me chuckle), she and I are both of the firm belief that you shoot to stop an intruder or assailant and never would either of us fire warning shots or attempt to "wound" someone like in the movies. hopefully neither one of us will ever have to use deadly force but if we were not comfortable with applying it if we had to we would not be considering a firearm.

thanks everyone!

edit: oh, also I saw biometric safes mentioned. are there models that allow more than one person to open them? I would not want to have it keyed to me (or whatever the terminology is, please excuse my ignorance) and then have her unable to open it if she is alone!

When I took my home defense course back in the pleistocene era, the instructor put it this way:

You do have to make the decision on whether you are willing to use the weapon to stop and potentially kill an intruder before you can safely keep a weapon for home defense. One of the benefits of making this decision and then practicing with the weapon itself and also thinking through home defense scenarios, is that if you keep it up and the time comes that you need to defend your home, you will react according to your training. You will hold the weapon confidently and with a steady aim. The intruder, provided that he or she is not totally gone on drugs, will see that and most likely retreat.

If, on the other hand, you do not prepare yourself and try to decide when confronted, your hand will be shaking, you will be making poor choices, you may be tempted to talk too much. If the intruder gets the idea that they have a good chance of carrying through what they consider to be their God-given right to attack you, they likely will. That's when the situation truly becomes do-or-die, and that's when you are most likely to have to kill them.

Your choice: be trained, think it through before there's a problem, and be less likely to actually have to shoot and kill somebody. Be untrained, react rather than think, and be more likely to either have to harm somebody or be harmed yourself.