Your home is your castle and it’s only natural to want to defend your castle. Your home is where you raise your children, share family meals, create beautiful memories, and keep your prized possessions.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there. Ensuring the safety and security of your home and loved ones should take precedent. The firearm appraisal and gun specialists at Lakeshore want you to be prepared for any scenario that could threaten your home.

While having a modern home security system is definitely helpful, one of the best insurances of home safety is having a firearm for home defense. Firearms manufacturers make guns for home dense in many sizes, shapes, and purposes, including firearms that are optimal for precise shots, minimal recoil, and quick draw.

How to Tell a Gun is Good for Home Defense

Not all guns are fit for home or self-defense. Again, firearms have different purposes and a long, hunting rifle does not serve the purpose of effectively protecting against hostiles entering your home. Why? Because it’s long, heavy, reduces your ability to check corners quickly, and typically has a low ammo capacity.

When purchasing a firearm for home or self-defense, you want a gun that is tactically built – they are lightweight, have short barrels, allows for quick and easy maneuvering to check corners and hallways, have high capacity ammo, higher fire rate, and allows you to get a line of sight on intruders quickly. Most all self-defense pistols are semi-automatic. Semi-automatic rifles and shotguns are also effective as home defense weapons.

Pistols for Home Defense

The reason pistols are optimal for self and home-defense is that they are lightweight and manageable. With a pistol, it’s easier to grab and go at the first sign of an intruder. A knowledgeable, firearm appraisal specialist will tell you that a well-designed self-defense pistol will have excellent handling, decent range, and easy to practice using it.

Pistols are also easy to store in your home. Some of the favored, easily accessible places for storing your pistol is a bedside drawer. This way, you will be able to respond to danger quickly. We want you, however, to be mindful of proper safety precautions to ensure your weapon does not fall into the wrong hands (children, family friends, etc.).

Rifles for Home Defense

While pistols are the preferred firearm for home safety, rifles can offer a few advantages. In instances of high stress, a gun owner could miss their mark, no matter how well trained they are. Having the right clip for your rifle can reduce the chance of running out of rounds at the most inopportune time. Oftentimes, shooters are more accurate when using a rifle than a handgun.

Rifles offer more power and speed than the average pistol, though handling a rifle takes some practice.

Shotguns for Home Defense

Nothing beats a tactical shotgun when it comes to close range encounters. Tactical shotguns are built shorter than standard hunting shotguns, allowing for easier maneuverability and better option for clearing a room and checking corners.

Shotguns are also very powerful. Because of their broad shot pattern, they are fully accurate, requiring less of a concentrated shot than a pistol. If your intruder is hit with a 12-gauge round, they will cease to continue to present a threat to your home.

When you are ready to upgrade your home defense readiness with new or used firearms, visit Lakeshore Guns’ extensive online gun catalog.