This article has been requested several times and it is ‘A’ philosophy on the bedside gun.  It doesn’t claim to be ‘The’ philosophy. What is correct and logical for one person in their circumstances may not be correct for you.  Please use this as a guide to think through your own circumstances before you send the hate mail! 

Centuries of evolution have taught our unconscious minds that bad things happen in the dark and when you are ill prepared.  Therefore, many people who take the security of themselves, their families, and their homes seriously keep a gun near where they sleep. 

The Best Defense is Layered

 Let’s be clear; shooting an intruder in the middle of the night is not the preferred outcome of a self-defense plan.  Few sane people want to get into a gunfight.  Asleep in bed with the lives of your entire family on the line is about the worst case scenario for any self-defense situation.  While the first step to surviving a gunfight is always to have a gun; a few easy steps may keep the fight from coming to you at all. 

Keeping an opportunist threat from your home may not be all that difficult.  You do not need your home to be an impregnable fortress with gun towers and a moat (though a man can dream), you need to make your space the least attractive option in the area.  First step is your area.  If you live in a high crime neighborhood next to an open air drug market you will have more trouble than someone living next door to a suburban police station. 

While infrared motion sensing cameras alerting you to each movement on your property would be nice, a few cheap dummy cameras can convince someone to find an easier target.  Depending on your budget the Ring doorbell adds a very easy to setup and uses a camera on your front door that alerts you to movement and allows you to speak to anyone on your front step.

 Keeping fences in good repair and shrubbery away from the house can make reaching your home too attention getting to be a reasonable target.  Good doors, locks and hardware can all make a world of difference in how much time it takes someone to get into your home, and alarms and dogs can both be a deterrent and give you more time to prepare to greet middle of the night visitors.  

Be Realistic

Several Internet authors discuss the number of 100-round drum magazines they keep next to the bed for their AR, and of course the spare AR for when they melt the barrel of the main rifle hosing down the hordes of soldiers marching on their home in the middle of the night.  If that is a realistic threat in your situation, you need to get right with somebody.  If a few dozen ninja assassins come for me in the middle of the night they are going to get me. 

The most likely middle of the night scenario I am likely to face, and I think this is true for most of us, is the opportunistic robbery.  Statistics show us this is likely to be a group of 1-3 males between 16 and 30 years old smashing in the front door and taking as much valuable material from your home as possible in a very short time. 

Less likely, but more dangerous is the planned takeover robbery.  In this scenario a small group of armed people plan to enter and takeover the home and the family in order to systematically rob them, often in an attempt to get access to back accounts and more money.  Unfortunately, a few of these incidents that have occurred over the past few years have typically ended badly for the family.  Sadly, lack of money is no defense in this scenario. A case like this happened once when a rumor went around a neighborhood claiming the family had won the lottery.  They hadn’t actually won any money but whether the robbers did not believe the family or simply due to frustration with their failure the criminals took the lives of the family. 

Lastly, there is the revenge scenario.  In this case someone in your life has decided you did them harm and they have decided to get back at you and your family through violence.  While certainly uncommon, this scenario has happened and the Internet has made finding anyone’s residence relatively easy.

There are many other possible scenarios, many are location dependent.  In some areas a steel gate is commonly installed on residential staircases because night time break-ins are so common.  In some areas midnight kidnappings are a very real threat.  Only you can answer the question of what is a realistic scenario for you in your life and your place in the world.  But if you find yourself placing sandbags under your windows maybe it’s time to find a friendlier place to live. 

My Situation

As stated in the introduction, my choice of bedside gun is heavily influenced by my situation.  My family lives on the far edge of a very urban area.  Our town was once so far from the city it was considered county, but though we still have a corn field behind our house the area is becoming decidedly suburban.  Despite living in suburban sprawl our house is covered by the local Sheriff’s office rather than a town’s police.  In ten years at this residence I have called 911 for the police twice and the response times were twelve minutes on a Saturday afternoon and 27 minutes after midnight on a Tuesday morning. 

Very bad things can happen in 27 minutes so I take the safety of my family as a serious responsibility. 

My situation also involves two little girls who rarely sleep through the night and may be up and moving about at any time, and my wife who may be up about trying to get the children back in their beds.  These are the people I am trying to protect from the worst case scenario and their presence has greatly altered my concept of the perfect bedside weapon system. 

Access

All my guns live in safes, even my immediate defense guns.  This is a decision I made years ago before I had children.  I don’t want one of my guns taking the life of a store clerk or police officer because I was careless and it was easily stolen.  We talk to our children, even the toddler, about gun safety on a regular basis but keeping the guns in safes is even more important with small curious hands in the house. 

However, a bedside gun must be immediately accessible, from bed, in order to ensure it is part of an immediate defense.  If I have time; someone is pounding on the front door and demanding entry at three in the morning, I may be able to get my carbine or shotgun.  But if the door has already been kicked open and feet are pounding up the stairs the gun must be immediately to hand or it will not be part of the fight. 

I keep a pistol next to my spot on the bed in a Gunvault SpeedVault.  I don’t use the biometric version because I have had bad luck in the past with biometric vaults.  Often the speed, pressure, and angle you present your finger has to be just right.  I use the push button version.  I don’t trust myself in the middle of the night to work the push button combination so I open safe each night as I go to bed and close it each morning when I get up.  It has become part of my sleep/wake ritual and my gun sits nestled in foam available each night and secure each day. 

I also keep a shotgun and a carbine in a safe in the bedroom closet.  I choose to keep a pistol as my immediate action weapon because it can be kept discretely in its safe next to the bed, be immediately available, is easy to use from various positions, and fits the threat level I am most likely to encounter.  I have seen various under bed safes and headboard concealment options, if those fit your scenario then great.  I’m not telling anyone to change I am just taking you through my thought process to get you thinking. 

Caliber

Here is where I will really start to lose people.  I have chosen a .45 ACP as my bedside gun and I keep it filled with 165gr. Remington Golden Sabers.  The .45 ACP Golden Saber 165gr load gets acceptable penetration in most tests, but does the WORST in the FBI Ballistics penetration test after passing through two layers of drywall. 

In shootouts typically less than 30% of rounds strike their intended targets, yet every round fired goes somewhere.  Being forced to shoot an intruder in my home in the middle of the night is the worst case scenario because the people I love are somewhere in that home.  I would need to be absolutely sure of my target before I would attempt such a shot, so I am not trying to shoot targets through the wall.  If I miss my intended target I want that round to penetrate as little as possible and to lose as much momentum as possible. 

There are specialty rounds and frangible rounds such as the Glaser Safety Slug made with this same concept in mind.  These are not a bad idea, though there is less data available on them.  I may revisit this idea in a future article. 

Lights

While I always keep more than one flashlight next to the bed I also keep a weapon light on my bedside gun.  Nothing in the bedside gun scenario is more important for me than target identification so I insist on a handgun with a rail system for a light.  There are some disadvantages to a weapon mounted light but having worked with them for more than a decade there are many advantages and all things equal I choose to have a light on my defense weapon. 

Action

Here is where I will lose most of you who have made it this far.  Twice in my life I have come awake suddenly and misidentified an object in my bedroom as an intruder.  Both times while reaching for my gun I woke up enough to realize my sleep addled brain had been confused and I was looking at some piece of furniture.  While those instances did not result in fired rounds they taught me a lesson about decision making when you are startled from sleep. 

With those experiences in mind and the fact my family is partially nocturnal I have chosen a standard double action platform for my bedside gun.  The standard double action has a double action first shot and the slide action of chambering the next round sets the exposed hammer for follow on rounds to be single action.  This action style was long considered safer than single action by law enforcement agencies because a deliberate 10+ pounds of pressure was required to fire the first shot. 

I have taken this safety precaution a step farther and for my bedside gun I require a manual safety.  I store the gun in my safe chamber loaded, hammer down, safety on.  My philosophy is that if I am not awake and cognizant of what is happening to take the safety off, then I am not awake enough to make a shoot no-shoot decision that will be with me the rest of my life.   My final consideration is that I refuse to accidentally hurt a family member because I was not fully conscious so I take advantage of a market that provides different features for buyers in different situations.

My Decision

My bedside gun is an H&K USP .45 with a variant 1 trigger.  This is the variant with the manual safety/decocking lever on the left side of the gun.  It is an older version of the USP with the original rail system and an original Universal Tactical Light rides under the frame. 

Some people have said they are surprised I rely on such a ‘classic’ (old) gun with the number of new wiz-bang guns that go through my hands.  This is the second USP I have owned and I have had this one almost 15 years.  There is no way to know how many rounds I have fired through this gun.  I used it as a match gun for years, it has been perfectly reliable and I know it well.  When you reach desperately for a weapon in the middle of the night to defend your loved ones, it makes sense for that weapon to be a trusted old friend.

I would love to hear about your decision process in selecting a bedside gun.  Many people have to go with the one gun they have, and that’s fine.  Please save the rhetoric of “You stupid – must choose (insert brand) because is moor good!” and let me know what went into your decision.