It’s happened to everyone at some point – you are sleeping at home, minding your own business just as your state of consciousness implies, and some stranger breaks in intent on doing you harm. Or to ask you to stop snoring.

Either way, you’re not asking questions and instead reaching for your shotgun. Then it hits you. You keep your shotgun in the closet, up on a shelf, completely unmindful of the constant threat of people breaking in intent on doing you harm. And you think, “We can put a man on the moon, even send him up there with a weapon, yet there is no device capable of allowing me to sleep comfortably knowing that my shotgun is within easy reach.”

Be vexed no more, my NRA friend. The good people at Home Back-up Protection, LLC of Newark, Delaware are well aware of your plight, and they’ve done something about it.

No longer will you have to worry about not having your shotgun near you, and thus constantly vulnerable to strangers breaking in intent on doing you harm. For when you flip off the lights, your mind will be eased gently into sleep with the knowledge you’ve got potent firepower racked bedside thanks to the Back-Up Shotgun Racking System.

This is the kind of simple yet ingenious design that will have you thinking, “Why didn’t I think of a device that allows me to sleep as comfortably with a shotgun by my side?”

The adjustable rack (available at www.the-backup.com) is connected to two flat brackets that slip gently between mattress and bedspring (and if you sleep on a futon, you are a hippie and undeserving of a bedside shotgun rack). The two C-shaped curves at the end of these brackets gently cradle your shotgun with no need of pesky latch or lock. The Back-Up is a holster for your bed, turning your sleeping area into a lethal firing range. Mr. Break-In Guy, meet Mr. 30-Aught-6 with a spray pattern guaranteed to make it difficult to get you out of the carpet after police leave.

No longer will you have to toss and turn with the 9mm that just wasn’t designed to fit comfortably under a pillow. Now you can put that pistol in the nightstand where it belongs, letting your spouse go for your backup piece if, for some reason, your first few shots go wild in the dark.

The makers of the Back-Up do suggest you not use the device when there are children in the home, leaving you completely vulnerable to the break-in guys just waiting for that night you choose not to sleep with your shotgun. Or you can just tell the kids not to touch daddy’s boomstick. Yeah, that sounds good.

To order your very own Back-Up Shotgun Racking System, and thus return to the kind of sleep you had before kicking the booze and painkillers, visit www.the-backup.com. Just one night of paranoid-free peace will have you believing the rest of the world is in for a pretty Goddamn big shock if it thinks it can just walk into your bedroom in the middle of the night and soundlessly take that shotgun from its rack and make you one with the bedding. Because that just won’t happen.