1) I don't smoke ITS A NAME and I keep saying this lol
Uhuh.
2) Houston area but my mother works in a pretty shitty part of town where road ragers constantly look for shit to start
I just googled it. All of the road rage shootings I could find involved 1 or 2 cars firing into the victims. The victims high-tailed it to the hospital and the offenders drove away.
What, in that scenario, is your intention for a firearm? You or your mother have been shot. Are you going to have a gunfight?
The road rage I could find was also on the highway. But you seem to be concerned with car jacking, not road rage. In the former case, you don't need a gun. In the latter case, your pepper spray will be fine. And they will probably be approaching you with guns drawn anyway, so you're not going to draw down on them dude.
3) we live in a nice area but our neighbors have been robbed multiple times. Who's next? Hopefully not us.
A) You don't live in a nice neighborhood. Nice neighborhoods don't have neighbors getting robbed 'multiple times'. It's either a family member stealing aunt gertrude's shit to pawn for crack, or you something similar.
B) If you are concerned about home safety, you should upgrade your home. Security doors, door reinforcement, window reinforcement, security systems, good cameras, a dog, and motion activated lights will do more to prevent incidents than a gun will. The home invasion rate while people are there is low; about 1%. The incident of those home invasions where the thieves know the home owners is also very high (50-60%).
4) the machete was just for show, and he got mad because he thought I was going to kill someone with it
You bought a shitty, low quality, overpriced, 2 foot long sword 'for show'. And you can't understand why your dad is worried about you owning a firearm.
Look. You want a gun. You're trying to talk it up as though you live in fucking Fallujah and need to be strapped 24x7 because there are roving gangs out to kill you and your mom. The gun is literally not an answer to a single one of the problems you have presented.