The lever gun is nice - for what it does. It would be preferable to get it in a rifle caliber, because the performance would be better suited. Pistol cartridge carbines simply don't have the range and power, deliberately limiting your reach. You'd do just as well inside a home with a pistol in the same cartridge.
What the lever action doesn't do is be as safe handling it around the home. It's particularly noted hunting if you need to unload it traversing a field obstacle or casing it at the end of the day - you have to jack every round thru the chamber to clear it, nicking up every cartridge and closing the bolt on a chambered round repeatedly. That can and will increase the danger of a negligent discharge.
The box fed semi auto rifle allows you to drop the magazine and retract the bolt, done.
Loading is easier, too. Hold back the bolt with the button, insert mag, push button, put on safe. Locked and loaded. With the lever you are still pushing one cartridge in at a time.
Need to reload, the lever has to be cycled. If you are down to one arm, you are toast. Same for a pump. With a self loading rifle, you just need to pull the trigger - same as a pistol or revolver. Funny how rifles that do that get demonized, but having to hand eject and cycle a handgun round by round is ok?
Think about that.
All the monkey motion is one of the reasons that consumers quit buying lever actions and Winchester went out of business. Nice period piece, I have one, but I'll likely never use it hunting again. I take the AR.
What possible scenario would you need a rifle for defending your home? Not for the distance shots as much as for the power above and beyond the level of a pistol. Rifle cartridges can penetrate more obstacles. If what a pistol round fails to defeat is cover, then a rifle turns it into useless concealment. If intruders are attempting to beat down your solid core door in your last ditch room, it's going to be a lot easier to shoot thru it with a rifle round than waste your time waiting for them to succeed to use a pistol round or even worse, shotgun pellets.
Ironically, the latest trend in discussions seems to be a focus on low penetration ammo, which is distinctly the opposite of military requirements and the emphasis in male dysfunction drugs.
Must be a metro thing.
Even the Vice President gets that. "Shoot thru the door!"
Which is another strike against a pistol cartridge in a rifle. No point in limiting your response when the intruder surely won't. If someone is worried about where rifle rounds might go, they need to map out their shoot/no shoot arcs and learn them for the specific domicile. Adopting a blanket response isn't the best approach. You need to know exactly where you CAN shoot thru to take away the intruder's advantage.
It's why most of the discussions about it on the net are rather fruitless.
Anyway, the new traditional firearm for Americans isn't the lever action. It's the AR15 - over 20 million troops have trained on it over the last 45 years. It's the Garand of the day, we just can't buy them used from our government. We pay retail.
Levers were pretty hot against muzzle loaders in the day, but I suspect one man armed with an AR against a team of lever gun users could hold his own. In a disparity of force situation, don't sell yourself out.
