[Pami]

Ok, I put off posting the last couple of hours because I was frustrated... confused... out of sorts... whatever... at 4sarge's post also. (Please don't take that as a personal attack, I was just surprised and am still not sure how to respond, actually.)

It did lead me to the question, though, whether you have talked firearms with women who were not police officers, nor competition shooters, nor were victims. They all have completely different mindsets. What about the woman standing in the middle of those groups?

I agree that if you don't have the mindset to accept you might have to kill someone that you shouldn't carry (it's one of the several reasons I do NOT carry right now), but this thread is specifically about defending your home. I'm doing things in baby steps. We have guns in the house. I went to the range to learn how to safely handle a gun. I have taken several trainings to continue to improve my comfort handling firearms. I am working toward developing the mindset that Bad Things could happen, and I'm hoping that it doesn't happen before I'm ready for that. I'm hoping that Bad Things don't happen at all, actually. But that's not how life works, and if it did happen before I'm ready, how would I respond?

I accept that you want to work with someone will just do the job, but how do we work on getting that person in to that mindset to begin with? Think of it from that perspective. You can't just hand a gun to someone who is afraid of firearms and expect her to have your back because she's suddenly developed the right mindset. You also don't want your SO to be so afraid of guns that she cries when she sees yours. How do you get her from point A to point B, and how would you want her to react to an intruder in the house if she were somewhere between points A and B?