Safe or Secure?

I am a member of a few different kinds of sites, but this is the only site I feel I could post a question like this and get a real world response. and not a fanatical lecture......

how do you choose between safety and security?

Tonight we had an interesting event, we were watching TV when there was a bang at the back of the house.  not a little bang, but a big BANG! like someone threw all of their weight against the back of our rural/suburban home.  The kind of bang that you feel just as much as you hear.  it freaked my wife out, and honestlyt freaked me out as well.  my first instinct was, it's 11pm, I'll be damned if I'm going out there.  but illogical reasoning and curiosity ruined that good idea and I had to go out to check what it was.  so I grabbed the giant beatstick style maglight and pocketed my conceal carry firearm (it stayed in my pocket), and I went outside to see that a very large bird had slammed into the back of our house.  I laughed it off, and went back in the house. 

This was when I got to thinking.....it took me a fairly long time(relativly speaking) to get my handgun from it's secure place and get the ammo from the other secure place.  I always swore that I would keep all of my firearms secure. but had this been someone beating down the back door to the house they would have had time to get through the door, swing by the kitchen, make themselves a cup of coffee and a sammich and still taken their time beating me senseless before I was prepared to defend my family.

The rules of gun safety say keep the firearm and ammo both locked up separatly....that is what I do, but this is not exactly practical in a real world self defense scenario (which my wife pointed out to me and I am strongly inclined to agree with.)

any of the firearms groups I frequent would say "why would you put your gun away? always keep a gun within easy reach", but I also swore I would never be one of those people who have handguns between the seat cussions and a shotgun strapped under the kitchen table(I know someone like that....we aren't friends anymore because I accused them of losing it.) or force myself to wear a holster while I was at home relaxing.  I feel if I ever felt that way it would be time to move to a safer place.

We don't have any kids in the house, we rarely ever even have visitors.  We live in a very safe neighborhood, in a developement that is very popular with retired police and even 2 judges. so I feel even safer, but just one township over there have been an alarming number of breaking and enterings, and people answering the door only to be greeted with a gun in the face from robbers demanding money(or that you go for a ride with them to a local MAC machine), I'm not sure what safe is anymore.  

I guess I'll be investing in a spring loaded biometric lockbox in the near future. 

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