The  yes­ter­day on Face­book I post­ed a pho­to of a lady hold­ing hand­gun. The cap­tion read; I would much rather explain to the police, why an intrud­er in my home has a hole in his chest, than to have them explain to my loved ones why I was raped and mur­dered!

One of my female friends post­ed the same pho­to and some­body made the com­ment that it was bet­ter to run from your house rather than risk miss­ing the intrud­er, or there may be more than one intrud­er. So this got me to think­ing about some sit­u­a­tions I have encoun­tered over the years.

When I lived near the South­ern bor­der the nar­co gangs would “attempt” a break in in a back bed­room to dri­ve their tar­get out either the front or back door where they were sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed. Most of these homes were brick with bars on the win­dows and the doors, the flim­sy kind albeit, so they were a lit­tle hard­er to actu­al­ly get into. Had the tar­get stayed inside and shot back he may have lived.

I have a friend that lives on the 10th floor with a 4x10 bal­cony. If some­body comes through the door where is he going to go? To the bal­cony and then where since it is 100 feet to the ground? I guess he could have his emer­gency escape rope ready to go. But then how does he get from his bed­room to that bal­cony to put on his har­ness, attach his rope and absail off the 10th floor with­out being noticed or shot?

What if you have a two sto­ry house with 3 bed­rooms up there and 4 kids? Good luck get­ting every­one awake and out the win­dows safe­ly and silent­ly. Yes it can be done if you prac­tice a lot but who will not notice that drill hap­pen­ing and be pre­pared for it? What if you nev­er pre­pared because you live in a “safe” area? How far is it to the ground and can every­one in your house get out by them­selves. I will just about guar­an­tee that every step you take on the sec­ond floor will be heard on the first, so the bad guy(s) will know that you know they are there.

This same guy went on to say that while they were steal­ing my stuff I could sneak out. My reply to that is this. Most break and enter guys are unarmed because they will just get a b&e theft con­vic­tion as opposed to armed rob­bery if caught. Most b&e guys I have ever met, and I have met a lot of them, nev­er break into a house that is occu­pied because peo­ple call cops or shoot them, which they tend to view as unfa­vor­able. If some­body is break­ing into an occu­pied home they are stu­pid, stoned, maybe both but they will almost always run like a scared rab­bit if they hear any noise. The ones that are not stu­pid or stoned are the ones that are there to do you harm. Rape you, mur­der you, or vio­late your fam­i­ly.

So you have to ask your­self as you are read­ing this if some­body broke in to your house right now what would you do? Right now I am typ­ing in my bed­room so if they came through the front, rear, or garage door I have the time need­ed to reach beside me for my Glock and begin to assess the sit­u­a­tion. How many intrud­ers and where are they at. My wife is asleep as are my chil­dren in two sep­a­rate bed­rooms across the hall with the doors closed. I can assure you if I go out there and try to cross the hall I will be noticed. So I am going to call 911 if I can and hope­ful­ly they will show up in their usu­al 4–5 minute response time while I hope that I do not have to engage the intrud­er but in the mean­time I will be pre­pared to shoot. If I can get my wife up and have her armed and ready I will do so if it can be done qui­et­ly. I can assure you that the whole house will wake when the first shot is fired and I hope every­one remem­bers to grab their gun and think tac­ti­cal­ly before open­ing those bed­room doors. Yes my whole house is armed and every one of my chil­dren can shoot well.

Oh yeah here is anoth­er thought, go stand at your front door and assess what you see. From my front door I can see the back door, the garage door, and the main hall­way, the din­ing room, part of the kitchen, one bath­room door and the liv­ing room. Some days open con­cept real­ly sucks. Now go to the back door, then the garage door, then to any oth­er door. What do you see? This is what your intrud­er will see. Ask your­self can you escape unde­tect­ed? Can you escape through a win­dow silent­ly. Maybe you could get out of the win­dow if it is not too far to the ground, but what about the oth­er peo­ple in the house. What if you have lit­tle chil­dren or some­body hand­i­capped and unable to walk or be moved? Your only real choice then is to stay and be pre­pared to fight while wait­ing for the local con­stab­u­lary to show up.  When the police show up and deal with the guy out front let them know who you are, and where you are, and who else should be in the house, and their loca­tions. Please do so with­out your weapon.

I do not know about you but I know my home pret­ty well. I know which boards creak and where they are in rela­tion to my bed­room. I pur­pose­ly keep the hinges on my front and rear doors squeaky which dri­ves my wife a lit­tle crazy but wakes me instant­ly when they are opened. If every­one is home when I go to bed then who just came in? They will get to meet me and my blind a Smurf flash­light an instant before they get a Pb injec­tion in their cra­ni­um and chest. Of course if it some­body that is sup­posed to be there, like a stu­pid teenag­er, that per­son will get a talk­ing too. 3 out of my 4 chil­dren have had the talk. Always ver­i­fy your tar­get before you shoot.

Anoth­er thing this fel­low men­tioned was what if you miss. I am not going out with a sin­gle shot and and only one bul­let. I have 17 rounds in that Glock and 4 more mag­a­zines just in case, but since I was an Army trained Sniper and spent 2 years on a SWAT team it is unlike­ly that I will miss, if I do I have 85 rounds total to get it right. If I  can­not get it done with 85 rounds and a max­i­mum shoot­ing dis­tance of 36 feet I will go vis­it the eye doc­tor assum­ing I live.

Do I want a gun­fight in my house? Hell no, but since I am already there, and know the lay­out, and the struc­tur­al cues I am going to stay and fight. I would rather explain to the police why some­body is dead on my floor and be judged by 12 if needs be than have any­one in my house car­ried by 6.