Republican Sen. Rand Paul's wife reveals why she sleeps with a loaded gun by her bed

Kelley Paul, the wife of Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), admitted that she sleeps with a gun at her bedside and has three deadbolts on her doors because she is so fearful from the threats and violence her family has experienced over the last 18 months, The Daily Mail reported.

"I now keep a loaded gun by my bed," Kelley Paul wrote in an open letter to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), which was published Saturday on CNN. "Our security systems have had to be expanded. I have never felt this way in my life."

She told Fox News' Mike Huckabee that she has called Booker to retract his statements this summer that encouraged liberal supporters to "get up in the face of some congresspeople."

Watch the Fox News interview below:

What happened?

Last year, Rand Paul was severely injured by a man who attacked the senator while he worked in his yard in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Paul suffered six broken ribs, lung damage, and had several bouts of pneumonia.

Some in the media have ridiculed the violence that her husband experienced, Kelley Paul said.

"Then to have people in the media who now claim they are advocating for victims actually ridicule him and laugh and I just found that incredibly hurtful and painful," Kelley Paul told Fox News.

"MSNBC commentator Kasie Hunt laughingly said on air that Rand's assault was one of her 'favorite stories.' Cher, Bette Midler, and others have lauded his attacker on Twitter," she wrote in her letter to Booker.

And, earlier this month, she said her husband was harassed at the airport.

"Rand was besieged in the airport by activists 'getting up in his face,' as you, Senator Booker, encouraged them to do a few months ago," she wrote in the letter. "Preventing someone from moving forward, thrusting your middle finger in their face, screaming vitriol — is this the way to express concern or enact change? Or does it only incite unstable people to violence, making them feel that assaulting a person is somehow politically justifiable?"

Adding to Kelley Paul's anxiety, she said their home address and the senator's cellphone were made public recently when someone leaked the Senate directory.

"I immediately felt vulnerable, very alone and afraid," she said when she found out about the leak.

What else?

Kelley Paul explained that she and her husband have respect for Booker and don't believe his words were meant to entice harm on Republican lawmakers, but that there are unstable people who take his words literally.

"I'm just so frightened that something terrible is going to happen to someone, I don't care who it is, just in the force of all of this anger and emotion," Kelley told Fox News.