BKinSD,
I have to ask what sort of handgun that it is. = My college girlfriend's mother in 1952 went to work as the private secretary to the CEO of an engineering company that also had several other commercial businesses.
"Mildred" was told on her first day at work that one of her responsibilities was to make the night deposits for the firm each evening on the way home from work. Her boss told her to take the cash from "petty cash" & go buy a handgun to protect herself & the night deposits. - Obediently, Mildred went to Schuler's Hardware in Pine Bluff, AR & bought a Colt's Cobra in .38 Special & a box of .38SPL ammo..
After she passed away in 2009, Sandra & I were asked to clean out her house by the attorney who was settling her estate & during the cleaning we found Mildred's handgun which was found with the entire box of 158 grain RNL ammo by Peters & the original bill of sale, that listed the little D-frame by serial number & the box of ammo. = In all those nearly 6 decades the revolver probably had never been fired & may NOT have ever even been loaded.
Buying a handgun (usually a small revolver) for "home defense", keeping it in "a convenient place" but never firing it was (& perhaps still is) evidently commonplace in the USA, as I can think of no other logical reason for all of the "new in the box" D-frame Colt & J-frame S&W revolvers that are frequently found a estate sales, garage sales, auctions & gun shows.
(My "brother of the heart" recently found what seems to be new, in the tattered box, Pre-WWII Colt's Banker's Special in .22LR from the estate sale of a woman, who was a jeweler & watchmaker, from Wheeling, WV. - It has NOT been fired & now will not be.)
yours, tex
