Troll, check out the stats. The incidence of thefts from occupied houses is bugger all, nearly all burglary occurs when houses are empty. So if you want the criminals _not_ to be armed, the first stage is to stop gun shops from selling guns to criminals (background check with gun license), and the second stage is to prevent criminals from being able to steal one (easily, anyway).

If you bought a gun for home defence, and you _really_ thought you'd need it (like you happen to live in the middle of a gang-ridden city centre), then I'll grant you that. But if you're _really_ worried about self-protection, you'd be carrying the gun with you all the time, not putting it down anywhere, right? Stuck in a desk drawer upstairs is just as useless as locked away in a gun cabinet if someone breaks in while you're watching TV!

But in your average town, the odds are vanishing small that anyone would think of breaking into an occupied building, so the priority is preventing easy theft of weapons from unoccupied buildings. A gun-nut friend has a small arsenal in his basement, and the thought of that lot getting stolen by a casual thief is positively terrifying.

On a similar vein, do you also leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition, so that you can jump in and get away quickly if someone chases after you? Of course you don't, bcos it's too easy for anyone else to steal it. Ditto locking guns away - if a burglar just needs to break a window to steal your Uzi sub-machine-gun...

Graham.