Does your neighbor having an AR-15 in his house make you feel safer?

[bossy22]

17. To answer your question simply, it has no effect on my feeling of safety

As long as my neighbor doesn't go into his backyard and start firing it (I live in a suburban neighborhood with closely packed houses).

Secondly, as an AR-15 owner myself I take offense to the rest of your post. You assume all of us are wingnuts/doomsday preppers/survivalists/militia members for owning such thing. That is simple not the case (since I am none of those and neither are my friends who own them). My reason for owning one is simply because I find it fun to shoot- they are highly accurate, easy to maintain, and when you have a crowded safe you don't have to worry about scratching the stock ). You don't realize how many of us are out there; from how many different walks of life we come from. I'll tell you many of the people I know (personally) own them are accountants, doctors, auditors, police officers, nurses...etc. Many of my friends and I got into AR-15 type rifles when we were in college together (back in the mid 2000's).

And yes, people by them because they are "cool" looking. I'm not ashamed to say that was a factor for me as well. Why should I be? We buy things all the time because they are "cool" or we like the way they look. Just look at car shopping- how many times have you overheard someone using those terms when looking at cars. You wouldn't by something that you find aestheticallly unpleasant. The problem is when it comes to the AR-15 and "military style" firearms is that everytime one of us mentions that we think they look cool you automatically assume we want to go out and play "seal team six" in the woods. That is not the case- maybe somewhere in my subconscious the reason I secretly want to do that, I don't know, but what I do know is that I'm not a member of seal team six, I'm not going to be, and I don't think by owning an AR-15 it brings me any closer.

Thirdly- I feel like a broken record for saying this all the time- one man's assault weapon is another man's target/hunting/home defense gun. It is impossible to draw a logical line between "assault weapons" and other guns (the only lines drawn are arbitrarily).

Fourth- I don't think your property values are going to be affected by what that person has in their gun safe. Would the property value of your house decrease if your neighbor had a gas guzzling SUV in the garage?

On edit:

Fifth- by what you say I should be shunned from my community- I find this extremely insulting and not only that- discriminatory. As long as I practice my hobby in a safe manner with respect to myself and others I shouldn't have to tarred and feathered. How would you like it if women who had abortions were shunned and unemployable? Because I can tell you, there are a decent amount of people in this country that feel that way. I have no problem with you thinking my choice of hobbies is disgusting/irresponsible/deadly but don't destroy my life.