[G-man 26]

And never underestimate the stupid action factor. We should all be able to remember doing stupid stuff at a young age, and not knowing why we did it, even at the time.

I had a couple of pistols on a sheet on the bed the other day, giving them the regular wipe down, light cleaning, and inspection. Right in front of my very eyes, my 7yr old ran into the room, reached out, and before I could stop him, pulled the trigger on my empty glock, as it lay on the sheet. He could not even say why he did it, and while I understood this, I still spanked the living tar out of him before sending him to his room and grounding him. You bet we have covered this before, and we covered it again. He doesn’t know why he did it, and knows better. Still it happened, he did it. Never under estimate the ability of a child to astonish you through action. Good or bad. And we will go over it again, and again, and again.

Totally unrelated, we had a bg in town for a while that broke me of the "nightstand" habit. He would break in to people’s homes, in the middle of the night, and just stand there at the foot of the bed, staring at you while you slept. Huge press coverage, and the police did a lightning fast and fantastic job of capturing this guy. Should this have happened to us, and we had a loaded and ready to go gun laying on the nightstand...(I shudder to think). I keep the thing under the pillow with no round in the chamber. If I can't wake up enough to function the slide, then I don't need to shoot anyway. It is the same amount of (acceptable) time to acquire the gun and make it usable, as placing it across the room. Plus it stays in my control. This may be wrong, but it works for me. If it is wrong, I hope I never wake up to a weirdo watching us sleep. I sure as heck don't want him holding my gun.

Ditto to those carrying while awake. +1 to that idea.