I didn't vote, since I USED to sleep with a gun under my pillow, until Dad took it back, quite astutely surmizing I'd use the thing if need be. Well he knew I would, having taught me to shoot at the age of 8 or so, I think. Having been 'blessed' :) with 3 girls, he thought they should be comfortable with guns. I am. I also know I would be in jail now if i'd used it, regardless of the fear for my life and the absolute certainty that it would be him-or-me in that case. There's an elderly woman moldering away at the moment in prison. After a lifetime of abuse, her husband held a gun to her head for 1000th time, chased her from her house. She got into her car to flee for her life, he stood in the way, pointing the gun at the windsheid. She floored the car, running over and killing the *sswipe, and is doing the rest of her life in jail. So I'd be in jail, doing my children no good at all.
I have baseball bats all over the place, one in the car unless my son swipes it for use. I hide the kitchen knives on the basis that someone would see one, pick it up and just GET me-silly, I know but do not see them as protection but a threat-goofy. I have a riding crop I keep over the mirror by the front door and do NOT leave the house without it. When I do, I panic dreadfully! It's funny, because the children and my husband just do not blink an eye, either, and if you think about it, how strange does THAT look? There's not a horse within a half a mile of the house.
Mace/pepper spray and wasp spray round out my little paranoid arsenol. Wasp spray is a GREAT defence weapon, since it would sting terribly, and sort of shoots a good distance. Hee. The last time I had to enter a courthouse was hysterical because you should have seen the face of the security guard when they confiscated THAT. I carry a purse the size of New Jersey and had actually forgotten it was in there. :)