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Last Sunday, my wife became the proud owner of a Beretta Neos DLX 6-inch .22 target pistol. It’s the ray-gun looking thing on the left. The following day, she took it to the gun range and demonstrated her ability to shoot two-inch groups while rapid-firing at 25 feet. Her grin was terrible to behold.

The Beretta Queen rides again!

My wife earned the nickname “Beretta Queen” from the early days of our marriage when we both dabbled in the occasional role-playing game (Dungeons and Dragons and all that related nonsense). One of my wife’s favorite characters was a Beretta-wielding British schoolmarm who tended to shoot first and ask questions later, if at all. The fact that she tended to target my character didn’t seem to faze her one bit.

A few years later, truth followed fiction when we became involved in recreational pistol shooting, this time with real guns and bullets. Fortunately, by this time she had learned to stop viewing me as a target of opportunity. However, everything else was fair game. Stacey took to shooting like she was the second coming of Annie Oakley. She was good; really good. For several years, we were both “gun nuts” in every sense of the word. We owned five pistols, a rifle, and a shotgun; we joined a local gun club and shot in leagues and formal competitions; we even reloaded our own ammo. We were practically our own militia, except for that whole secluded-compound thing.

And then our son was born, and life took a turn to the left. Suddenly, every twenty-dollar-bill was earmarked for boxes of diapers, not boxes of ammo. Every trip to the local gun range became a trip to the baby food aisle of the local Walmart. Most importantly, every handgun became an accident waiting to happen. It was with sadness and some regret that we sold off our collection, all except for the shotgun.

My regular readers might assume that this newest handgun purchase was motivated by last weeks brush with the local criminal element. Yes, that incident may have influenced my timing, but we had been contemplating a return to Handgun Alley for several months now. What really influenced our decision? Hurricane Katrina.

The week following Katrina’s landfall taught us a thing or two about civilization, polite society, and the governments ability (or inability) to handle a truly massive disaster. We began to realize that, in a disaster situation, we cannot blindly count on receiving immediate help — not from the government, nor from society as a whole. If something were to happen here — flood, firestorm, or even terrorist attack — we might very well be on our own for several days. If I’m going to be a good steward over my family, I owe it to them to be able to protect them, and if necessary, defend them.

It helped our decision considerably that Matt recently turned twelve years old. He’s going to be taking Rifle and Shotgun merit badge classes at Boy Scout summer camp, so I felt he was mature enough to learn his way around a handgun. Of course, I plan to invest in gun locks and an electronic safe — no sense being foolish about this.

We went for the Beretta first for a specific reason — practice makes perfect. The .22 Long Rifle cartridge is by far the cheapest ammunition on the planet, with 1000 rounds costing less than $20 on average. It’s also an ideal round for younger shooters. However, it’s a lousy choice for a defensive round, so we plan at least one more pistol purchase in 9mm. I’m eyeballing the Taurus PT99, the Springfield XD, or the CZ75, but I’m open to suggestions. We may even pick out a .22 rifle, once again so the youngster can learn how to shoot a long arm.

It appears we’re back in the gun-nut business, and perhaps this time it will stick for good. My acceptance of handgunning and other second-amendment accoutrements may surprise some of you that know me as “Mister Moderate Politics.” To put it bluntly, when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms, I am unashamedly conservative. They’ll take my gun when they pry it from Charleton Heston’s cold, dead hands.

And a word of warning to any bad guys that might want to bust into our house — my wife keeps the pistols on her side of the bed. ‘Nuff said.