We have a yappy little Maltese. He was yapping away near the front window when some people were walking by and H heard them say, “oh, those people must have one of those motion detector dog-bark alarms”, lol. I didn’t even know those were a thing.
Is she related to the “Bush’s Baked Beans” Dog who’s always trying to sell off his owner’s secret recipe by any chance? 
In 2012, there were 259 justifiable self-defense incidents involving guns and 548 unintentional deaths resulting from firearms being mishandled, etc, not including self-inflicted gunshots. About 80 of those deaths involved children shooting themselves or others. Even if you take children out of the picture, you are more likely to be shot by a gun in your home than to shoot someone in self-defense. I think guns provide a false sense of security. If home security is a concern, make sure all your doors and windows are in good working order and keep your entry points visible and clear of shrub overgrowth and the like. Burglars don’t like to be seen, and are looking for easy targets.
No, there were 259 justifiable homicides reported to the FBI. Since not all self-defense uses of a gun result in a death, meet the FBI’s extremely narrow definition of justifiable homicide, or get reported to the FBI, even when it occurs, the statistic is all but meaningless. To see how absurd that number is, cops shoot about 1000 people a year, and almost all of those are ruled self defense by their department.
@roethlisburger , sorry, I should have clarified, this doesn’t include incidents involving police. And no doubt not all accidental shootings are recorded either, or self-defense shootings for that matter.
Technically, you are more likely to get killed drowning, driving in your car, crossing the street, or burned in a fire than wounded or killed from an accidental gunshot.
Of the 318 million people living in the US in 2014, ~23% owned a gun (or ~73 million people). Unintentional non-fatal injuries for that year were ~16,000, and fatal injuries at 586. These numbers yield an unintentional non-fatal injury rate among gun owners of 0.02%, and a fatal injury rate of 0.0008%.
Source: https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html
https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10_us.html
Let’s not politicize this issue. Firearm accidents are relatively rare. More importantly, owning a gun for self-defense is just not necessary for the vast majority of people, based on logic and commonsense.
I just don’t see how you can protect yourself in your home with a gun.
To avoid accidents, the gun has to be kept locked up, with the ammunition locked up separately. So you can’t get to the gun and ammunition in time to use it for protection in an emergency situation.
I can see how people in some high-risk occupations or locations might need to carry a gun (and might need appropriate training to be able to do so safely). But that’s a different situation.
Even so, only about 40% of fatal police shootings get reported to the FBI under the UCR. I would expect the rate of under-reporting of legal private citizen fatal shootings to be just as large, and there’s a big difference between self defense incidents and self defense incidents resulting in a fatality.
@roethlisburger , sorry again, more clarification. Justifiable homicides: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-guns-self-defense-charleston-20150619-story.html
@fractalmstr I made no political statements about anything. I simply cited some statistics. We are not talking about drowning or car accidents. OP is fearful of having guns in the home, and it seems her fears have some justification. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-guns-in-home-increase-suicide-homicide-risk/
Pools present their own dangers, but that’s not what OP is talking about.
This.
I would add that while having a big dog that barks might actually make you safer at night, and feel safer, a dog is a living being that should not be acquired as an appliance. Only get a dog if you actually WANT a dog.
If you want an alarm system, get an alarm system with an audible alarm that connects to the police. Put up signs that say your house is protected. Consider motion detector lights, too. But really, rationally assessing your actual risk is the first step.
A number of years ago there were a few thugs who were breaking in to houses during the day while the owners were away at work in a more rural area near us. They had a simple way of dealing with threatening dogs: one opened the door, and the other clubbed the dog with a baseball bat. Most dogs they just shut into a bathroom, if the owner was lucky.
Motion detectors? Wouldn’t they go off every time deer wander through your yard?
When my kids were 12 and 8, my husband had to find a house for us in an unfamiliar part of the country while I stayed home because the kids needed to be in school. Since I could not go house hunting with him, he asked me for a checklist of the things I wanted and didn’t want in a house. Top of my list was “No swimming pool.” I was horrified by the liability.
The irony here is that my husband and I met when we both had summer jobs at a swimming pool store. (He was in college; I was in high school.) If everyone felt the same way about pools that I do, that store would not have existed.
Yup if close enough, and the dog will bark, too, at deer but that comes with the territory.
I think it would depend how you had them set, but certainly wildlife could be an issue. But it’s only a light. I personally have never had either an alarm or a motion detector light, but I also do not feel the need to arm myself, and my last few dogs have been golden retrievers who not only were not barkers, but would probably serve the burglar a cocktail and show them where the good stuff is. 
We only started locking the door when we go out in the last 10 years or so, because apparently it makes a difference to insurance if there is a break in. My former neighbors across the street used to go away on vacation and leave the house unlocked. It would be incredibly easy for anyone to break into either of our houses without being detected, but we live in a very safe semi-rural place.
ETA: the possibility of scaring the deer away from eating the rhododenrons is an extremely attractive one. Alas, I doubt it would work.
Deer are not scared by motion activated lights. At least our resident mom and her two kids aren’t. 
If one wants to go fancy, one can commission a personalized pet warning sign. I am thinking about getting one!
The robbers would probably steal your sign first, @BunsenBurner, if you got something that cute. 
Deer aren’t even scared by me trying to pull my car out of the driveway. They’ll plant their stupid selves right behind the car and make me late for work.
Nahhhh… they will run in fear after seeing my three danger cats!
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
This is not related to the OP, and debating the issue only serves to go against my earlier post. Regardless, OP has made her decision:
So closing thread.