Heck, sometimes I forget where I even hid them.
I knew a former Arizona prosecutor who told me he had a weapon in every room of his house. I asked a mutual friend, "Don't you think that's a bit extreme?"
"Ordinarily, yes," my friend said, also a prosecutor, "but knowing some of the people he put away, it's not...for him.
Do any of you know of anyone with guns who have been "counseled" to lose them by the presiding elders?
I've been told guns are okay to use for hunting, but not for self defense. I have a friend who's a member of the Apostolic Church of God, and she is wholeheartedly for the Second Amendment. But, she's against using firearms for self defense, believing that God will protect her and her family. Generally, however, God requires that we do all that we can for ourselves before lending His assistance. Anciently, God met many prophets on mountain tops. This was, I think, symbolic of this principle.
My firearms instructor told me the story of an intruder who advanced on a woman who was armed but couldn't bring herself to shoot. But then the woman's 6-year old son came into the room. Smiling wickedly, the intruder stepped sideways to grab the child...and was greatly surprised when the lad's mother emptied the gun into him, killing him on the spot.
In the U.K., Tony Martin, a farmer, received a "life sentence" when he used a shotgun to shoot one of two intruders who had broken into his home and subsequently threatened Martin with a raised crowbar. But the farmer had neglected to turn in the shotgun in when the country outlawed them, and ended up in prison whilst the other intruder was lionized by the media, even though both had criminal records and several of Martin's neighbors had been brutally assaulted in the past. Still, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We can't have people taking the law into their own hands." Yeah, even if the guy was going to smack you in the head with a crowbar! In the U.K. there was outrage, but not enough to save him from a life sentence. The surviving intruder was turned into a hero whilst the victim was turned into a hateful vigilante. As one great 19th century religious leader said, a people who lose the Spirit of God lose the ability to act in their own self interest.
I think that's true.