@ Karlos
"...Unless your guns are easy for you to get hold of and load in an extremely short space of time I fail to see how option "a" could be enacted except in the case the guys are stood there making a massive disturbance for however long before getting in. Let's face it, that's not exactly what happens in the majority of cases.
Of course, if your guns are easy to get hold of quickly, they are that much easier to steal too.
You realistically can't have it both ways. You can have them properly secured or you can have them ready to use in a genuine emergency...."
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Not so, my good man. You wouldn't be aware of it (most UK people probably don't need to be aware of it), but various safes exist that are secure and very fast to open. These are mainly of use in SA or the US where you can have a gun in a safe at home, the gun being in a loaded condition.
In the majority of burglaries that I am aware of, some time and effort has been expended by forcibly gaining entry to the premises. Of course if you leave your doors unlocked and windows open then you may have no warning that someone is breaking in (this assumes you are at home when it happens).
Hypothetically speaking, a farmer who heard a door or window being broken could indeed get to his safe (which in most instances is in his bedroom, before the intruder could get to him. This would be more likely to happen if he locked the bedroom door behind him ;-)
Having said that, the situation in countries where firearms are a legitimate weapon for self defense is usually like this: the guy will have the gun accessible but concealed in the house while he is at home. If he leaves the house, he either takes it with him or he locks it up.
However, even in SA and certain states in the US, it is not an automatic signal to come out with guns blazing because you hear somebody breaking in. The advice in a case like that is as follows:
1) Take yourself and your loved ones to your designated safe room and lock yourselves in.
2) Call the police and tell them you are being burgled, how many innocents there are and which room you are in. Advise them that you are armed and are waiting in the room.
3) You wait for the police and let them deal with the burglars/home invaders. You only fire on the burglars if they bust into the room that you are in. The advice is to let them steal what they want and let the police try to apprehend them.
There is a misconception that a firearms owner is a blood-thirsty psychopath just looking for an excuse to kill somebody. I know gun owners in countries all over the world and the majority of them are not interested in escalating a situation to the point that shots are fired. This is logical, because a law-abiding citizen doesn't want to lose his firearms or his freedom because he acted illegally in the use of deadly force, with his firearm. The majority of these people (and certainly ALL the people I shoot with) value life and don't want trouble.
I have been shooting various firearms since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I have fired a total of ONE shot in a situation that was related to defense. In that case I prevented a man from stabbing a woman to death in Johannesburg in 1995. I also used the same gun to arrest that man.
So I guess the score is X-ray 1, Goblins 0
(Comment for Mel: I took the pistol that was involved in the above incident to a psychiatrist. This was to check whether the pistol had a bloodlust or had developed a bad attitude because of firing that shot. This was a good thing for me to do, because although my pistols are quite well behaved, one can never underestimate their capacity to corrupt or render their owner a wicked person. You'll be glad to know that under very detailed questioning, the pistol promised to never countermand any of my orders, and to never exude a miasma of evil or malice as long as it is registered to me. :-P )
