I'm a woman who lives alone and I don't sit on my porch wondering who I'm going to shoot next

[hunter]

37. I don't let anyone I'd care to shoot live in my head.

Life is much more pleasant that way.

I've lived in some rough places and had some encounters with very bad people threatening me with guns. I've also seen the police shoot people I myself wouldn't have shot. But I've never been in a situation where me holding a gun would have improved the outcome. In my personal experience once the guns come out everything is FUBAR.

For most of my adult life I've lived in places where advertising one's gun love, such as the "We don't call 911..." sign you describe, is just an invitation for the local fourteen year old aspiring gangsters to break into your house and steal your guns when you're not home.

The saddest thing about guns is how often gun enthusiasts deliberately shoot themselves. The person they see in the mirror becomes the person they imagine shooting. And then they do.

I grew up in a household where there were always strangers hanging about, strangers to me, anyways. My parents and my siblings had diverse friends and acquaintances. You never knew who you might run into at two o'clock in the morning rummaging through the kitchen cupboards or coming out of the bathroom. When our own kids were teenagers our house was like that. I always figured if the family dogs had accepted someone they were probably all right.

Living in isolation, with Fox News constantly on the television and similar crap spilling from the internet, will twist people. Living in isolation itself isn't bad if your pursuits are positive, for example gardening, art, etc.. It's when you start to see the outside world as a scary dangerous place and isolate yourself for that reason alone when things go horribly wrong.

There will always be aspects of life that are scary and dangerous, for some people more than others, and for all sorts of reasons, but you can't let that consume you.

My own mind turned against me in adolescence and it took about a decade to claw most of it back, but one thing I learned was that an affable nature and shoes I could run in were my most powerful tools of self preservation. I've got some scars and PTSD from the times I've forgotten that.

An affable nature includes being kind to yourself.