Jasper616,
First, congrats on getting such a nice weapon!
Now practice, practice, practice until it's second nature to you. Even inside your home, get comfortable aiming it in different areas of your home. Figure out places that are easy to defend. Look for places in your home that would be harder to defend. If you have a stairwell and the bedrooms are upstairs, it's vital that you not give that up. Find the places in your house that are most vulnerable to entry from an intruder. See what you can do to shore those ares up. Go thru scenarios in your head and figure out your responses.
Lots of work to do to get really up to speed. Remember, you're only a beginner until you get lots of proper practice in.
Also, after you get comfy with your handgun, before you know it, you'll be wanting another gun, most probably a long arm. The .12 gauge is hard to beat, but not impossible to beat. Personally, I have an M-4 .223 carbine with multiple 30 round mags for my longarm of choice inside. Much harder to learn to shoot well than the .12, but it's time well spent because of the many pluses that the .223 offers. Besides being a shorter weapon to maneuver around inside, you have much more time before reloads. Granted, the odds of being in a long, drawn out shoot-out are miniscule, but you're prepping for a worse case scenario, right? Worse case is needing to be hunkered down for a while defending against multiple targets. After a while, the .223 will be as familiar to you as your cell phone.
Last but not least is to prepare your mind for what you may have to do. You seem very sincere and serious, and so the next step is getting your mind set.
Don't become paranoid, but learn to be vigilant. Make sure you can respond as needed. Maybe, if you feel comfortable, go speak with a member of your local police department and start asking questions about home defense. I've been a police officer since 1981 and it's hard to find an officer who doesn't like talking about guns or tactics.
Also, you'll get some mighty fine advice just perusing thru these threads on this forum. I was never computer savy and don't spend a lot of time on them. But I found this site very recently and you have some very good gunners here with untold years of experience.
Best wishes to you!
