Living with roommates already takes a certain amount of trust. You have to trust people with shared space, shared bills, noise, guests, and a hundred little everyday things that can turn into problems fast. But one Reddit user said their roommate situation had crossed into something far more serious than messy dishes or loud music.
According to the post, the people they lived with owned guns and had a habit of pointing them near the poster. The poster said it was happening often enough that they no longer saw it as a one-time lapse in judgment. It had become part of the way their roommates behaved around firearms, and the poster was scared.
The situation became even more disturbing because the roommates were allegedly drinking while handling the guns. That detail changed everything. Poor gun handling is dangerous enough when everyone is sober. Add alcohol to the mix, and the risk starts looking less like a bad habit and more like a disaster waiting for one careless second.
The original Reddit post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/7vfaw0/roommates_will_not_stop_pointing_guns_near_me_and/
The poster wanted to know what they could do legally. That is what made the post feel tense from the start. They were not asking whether their roommates were annoying. They were asking how to protect themselves while still living under the same roof as people who, according to them, kept treating firearms casually.
The hardest part in a situation like that is the lack of distance. If a stranger acts reckless with a gun, you can leave. If someone at a range breaks safety rules, you can get away from the firing line or report it to staff. But when it is happening inside your home, there is no easy place to stand where you feel fully safe.
The poster seemed to understand that calling police could make the living situation explode. But doing nothing also felt impossible. A gun pointed near someone, even as a joke or careless gesture, is not just rude. It violates one of the most basic firearm rules. You do not point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy.
That rule is simple for a reason. It is supposed to hold even when someone says the gun is unloaded. It is supposed to hold even when someone is joking. It is supposed to hold when people are tired, distracted, showing off, or handling a firearm around friends. The whole point is that there should be no “close enough” when the consequence can be permanent.
The alcohol made the poster’s fear more immediate. People who drink often get louder, more careless, and more confident than they should be. If the roommates were already acting unsafe sober, the poster had every reason to worry about what could happen after they started drinking.
The post did not read like someone trying to win a roommate argument. It read like someone trying to figure out how to get through the next day without becoming the person everyone later says should have spoken up sooner.
Commenters were direct about the danger. Several told the poster that if someone points a gun at or near them, especially while drinking, they should treat it as a serious threat and leave the home if they can do so safely. Some said this was well beyond normal roommate conflict.
Others encouraged the poster to document what was happening, but not in a way that put them in more danger. The main advice was to prioritize safety first, not evidence collection. A video might help later, but no clip is worth staying in the room while drunk people mishandle firearms.
Some commenters said the poster should contact law enforcement if the guns were being pointed at them or used to intimidate them. The advice varied depending on location and lease situation, but the tone was consistent: this was not something to solve with another casual house meeting.
A few people focused on the lease and housing angle. If the poster could move out, they were urged to do it. If they had a landlord, commenters suggested asking whether firearms, threats, drinking, or unsafe conduct violated the lease. That route might not fix the immediate danger, but it could help create a path out.
There was also a lot of frustration from gun owners in the comments. They did not defend the roommates. They were angry because reckless handling like this is exactly the kind of behavior responsible gun owners warn against. To them, the problem was not that firearms existed in the home. The problem was that people who had no respect for basic safety were treating them like toys.
The post did not end with a neat solution. It ended with the poster facing the kind of choice nobody wants: stay quiet and hope the roommates do not make a deadly mistake, or report it and risk a confrontation with people who already showed they could not be trusted around guns.
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