My youngest daughter is very proud of herself this morning. She’s learning to cook, and made banana pancakes with her mom this morning. My older daughter is working on a project in the back yard with my darling wife, who I was lucky enough to meet 21 years ago last night.

I love them all dearly, and that is why I will never give up the best defense I have to protect them, my AR-15 carbine.

I’ve been watching politicians and activists tell me all week that I don’t “need” an AR-15 or similar firearms. I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of them have never fired an AR-15, and ff they did, it probably looked like this.

AR-15s are not “weapons of war”—they’ve never been general issue for any army in the world—but they are wonderful weapons to keep the peace and protect those I love.

A handgun is decent for close range self-defense, but as any expert will tell you, they’re a close-range, last-ditch weapon that we conceal carry in public because we simply don’t expect to meet deadly-force threats in the course of our daily lives. That’s precisely the same reason police officers only carry handguns on patrol under normal circumstances in the United States.

Shotguns have their place as well, being an incredible fight-stopper at close and medium-range engagements out to 50 yards or more, but they have low magazines capacity, stout recoil (even with solid technique, and I’ve won competitions with mine), are slower shot-to-shot, and aren’t precise.

My AR-15 allows me to confront the increasing threat of violent criminals operating in packs instead of as individuals.

We just had a home invasion in Cary this week featuring five armed thugs, including the criminal above. The family was unarmed and completely at the mercy of the criminals, who robbed them blind, took one family member hostage to a nearby ATM to clear out their bank accounts, then stole their SUV out of spite, and burned it. Don’t you think they wished they had an AR-15 to cut these thugs down as soon as they kicked in the door?

A handgun with a 7, 10, or 15-round magazine wouldn’t have given me the firepower I need to win a 5-on-1 fight.  This is despite the fact my level of defensive training with a handgun is is far greater than most Americans, and my skill exceeds that of most law enforcement officers.

A shotgun—most of which only have a five-round capacity to begin with— would have left me with an empty gun.

I love my family, so my home defense firearm is an AR-15

Let’s do a quick “tour” of my home defense AR-15.

I have a simple yet effective “A2”-style flash suppressor on the end of the barrel. The slots in the flash suppressor direct burning propellant gasses away from my line of sight while also minimizing them, so that I can always see threats. Above the barrel (the rifle is on its right side in the photo) is a 500 lumen weapon-mounted light. While small, it throws a blinding amount of light, and makes it very difficult for a bad person to accurately aim a weapon at me or my family, increasing our odds of survival. It also enables me to see exactly what kind of threat I’m facing.

Moving back, you can see the front handguard that encases the barrel. It gives me a good purchase so that I can accurately aim my rifle, so I can get more precision than I could ever dream of with a handgun, ensuring I have the best possible opportunity to make accurate hits, so that I can afford to fire fewer rounds. At the back of the handguard on the upper receiver is a red-dot sight.

My red dot sight does not offer any magnification, but I when I look through it, it places a bright red dot on potential threats that only I can see, day or night. I can easily keep both eyes open with this kind of sight, enhancing my peripheral vision so I can better see both potential threats that I might need to shoot, and more importantly, innocent bystanders.

I carefully selected the cartridges I use in my home defense AR-15. The gray and black bullets are a marvel of modern technology. The gray tips are plastic, and upon striking a target, are forced back into the body of the bullet, which is a soft lead core. As the plastic tip moves backwards into the soft lead core, the bullet expands very quickly and can fragment. This has the dual effect of dumping all of the energy into the body of any threat, hopefully ending the fight quickly, which keeps my family safe, and believe it or not, actually gives the bad guy threatening a better chance at survival. If I have to shoot him more times, he has less of a chance of survival.

The rapidly expanding bullet is also safer for everyone in my home and neighborhood in the event that I miss as well. When the plastic bullet tip strikes building materials such as sheetrock or 2×4 studs or brick, it drives the tip into the lightweight core and immediately begins slowing this bullet down. It actually poses less of a risk of overpenetration through multiple walls than most common handgun bullets, or buckshot or slugs from a shotgun.

I use standard capacity 30-round magazines in my home defense AR-15. I can deliver 30 precision rounds against threats to my family as needed from every magazine. At my current skill level, I can personally deliver up to 2-3 precision shots to the center of the chest of a human threat per second at in-home distances, and transition from threat to threat in a second or less.

The faster I am able to put accurate rounds on threats to my family, the fewer shots these threats can fire at my family. The shorter the fight, the better chance my family has of surviving a home invasion.

Why on earth would any sane human being want to give violent home invaders a “fair fight” by limiting how law-abiding citizens can most effectively respond to threats on their families by increasingly large groups of criminals?

The AR-15 platform and similar rifles give men and women of every race, size, age, and physical ability (including disabled people who cannot reasonable fire handguns or shotguns) the ability to defend those lives they hold most dear.

I will not surrender my AR-15 to corrupt politicians more interested in controlling me than protecting my family, no matter what blatantly unconstitutional laws they author.

Nor will the other owners of nine million other AR-15s.