Caroline,
Feel free to email me anytime,
[email protected] or
[email protected] and I'll be glad to help you work out an easy afordable way to protect whatever u want to protect without the use of a gun. Won't charge you a thing for it. I'd just hate to see you make the wrong decsions because I had the fucking nasty task of picking up a few of those that thought in the middle of the night and being suddenly woke up they could do what you're wanting to, withtout training (constant) couldn't hit the side of a barn at 2 ft. away.
Again, all the best.. you've got the rest of your life to decide, please even if you ignore every thing i've said.. take a little more time and talk to a few more people before you decide to go down to the gun store.
Over n' Out!