Feeling Safe at Home: Does it Take a Gun?
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
The pandemic has inspired a surge in gun sales, I have read, not really understanding why. But research shows that having firearms in the house won’t necessarily help in a dangerous moment –and it can heighten other risks, such as accidents with children finding them.
Discussions about guns and their safety or dangers have also been sparked by the recent accident on the Alec Baldwin movie set for the film “Rust,” where a crew member was killed when the gun Baldwin was firing was somehow loaded with real bullets rather than blanks.
Early in my career, I applied for a job with a public relations agency where the interviewer told me that the job had become available when a former account executive had walked off the job when it came time for him to board a plane. It seems that he had a fear of flying, which he could not overcome when it came time to visit a client in another city.
The interview was going swimmingly, my emphasizing that I loved to fly, until the wrap-up when I was asked if I happened to have any fears or hang-ups that would prevent me from performing on the job. I volunteered that the only fear I could think of was that of guns. I was quickly dismissed without getting the job after being told that the major account on which I would have served was the U. S. Army!
But I always had that fear of guns, and perhaps I still do today. Maybe it’s something from my early childhood, perhaps as young as five or six years old, when my parents took me to the funeral of one of my dad’s friends who had been shot with a gun in front of his home in South Philadelphia. In those days – the Dark Ages – funeral homes exposed the whole body, including the shoes, and that poor guy who had been shot left a lasting impression on me that guns were something to be avoided, including owning one.
There was only one time in my family’s history when I considered the purchase of a gun. It was when my home in Brooklyn Heights was burglarized while we slept in our beds. Whenever I think about that early morning when my wife awoke and told me that she had dreamt that someone was in our bedroom, looking at us in bed, I get the chills because, in fact, that had been exactly what happened.
When my wife went downstairs to make breakfast, I heard her scream from the kitchen that our back door to the garden had been completely taken off its hinges. In those days, we kept no cash to speak of in the house and the only thing the burglar was able to steal was my daughter’s piggy bank. We learned something when we discovered that every single book in our rather large library had been opened. The intruder was obviously checking for hidden cash.
Still, I began fantasizing about what I would have done if I had woken while the burglar was in the house, with the scenarios of my having and not having a gun. If I had a gun under my pillow and awoke, would I have blown him away? Or would I have just said “Hands up?” Probably the latter, but I really don’t know, considering the alarm of the moment.
One of my friends suggested that, rather than a gun for home protection, I might consider having a can of wasp spray close to my front and back door. Wasp spray was recommended because it shoots more directly at its intended target. I even mentioned the possibility in one of my columns, only to have a reader upbraid me by saying, “Right, go blind another person, then see how you feel.”
Considering the pros and cons of having a gun in the house, I suppose I would recommend to others that they invest instead in a quality home security system to protect themselves from the criminal elements among us, which thankfully are not high in our region.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest running public relations agency in
Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com). His real estate site is www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com. To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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