Home Defense in the Suburbs

     This is another topic that I feel very strongly about. One of my primary responsibilities as a father and a husband is to protect my family. One of the most common threats to my family are other people. People who wish to do them harm, or are willing to do them harm if my family gets in their way. We'll discuss self defense and defense of others while in public at a later time.

     The topic of this post is home defense. Home defense is different than home security in that home defense is reactive while home security is proactive. With home defense you're reacting to someones breaching of your homes' security precautions. With home security you're making your home the least attractive target in the area, being alerted if someone is on your property, and making it difficult for someone to gain entry without your knowledge.

     I'm going to make references to The Cooper Color Code several times in this post. Basically the color code refers to your state of awareness of your surroundings, and to your sense of alertness to the presence of danger. If you'd like to learn more about The Cooper Color Code or about Jeff Cooper himself (considered by many to be the father of the combat mindset), please go to the Wiki Page about him, you can find that HERE. 

    In summary of that page, the colors are:

• White - Unaware and unprepared.
• Yellow - Relaxed alert.
• Orange - Specific alert.
• Red - Condition Red is fight.

     One of the problems you have to overcome in defense of your home is that you're in condition white while you're at home. You should be in condition white while you're at home. It is your domicile, your castle, your refuge from the world. Most people are in condition white when in their home and when in their car. This is why you look over at a red light and the person in the car next to you is knuckle deep in their nose picking boogers. They're completely unaware you're even there, much less looking at them in horror from 4 feet away.

     Being in condition white is perfectly natural while in your home. However, it increases your reaction time significantly. It's very difficult to go from condition white straight to condition red and react to a threat correctly. Seasoned combat veterans have trouble doing it, the average civilian home owner is justifiably behind the 8-ball so to speak. You have to understand the dynamics of violent crime. First of all, bad guys rarely come by themselves to do bad things. The bad guys already know what's about to happen, and they're prepared. You, the homeowner, have no idea what's about to happen. You have to figure it out on the fly once it's already in progress, and react to it accordingly.

**** I'd like to preface the following discussion with a caveat: The following is what I would do.  I know the laws of my state, it's legal to use deadly force (under certain circumstances) in the defense of your home in the state of NC, and I can legally own a firearm. It is your right to keep and bear arms, it is also your responsibility to own them responsibly and to exercise good judgement when they are in your possession. I don't want this post to turn into a gun debate. It's simply my opinion of how I would act if the following  hypothetical scenario occurred in my home. **** 

     Now that the disclaimer stuff is out of the way, lets get down to brass tacks. We'll cover what tools I would use, and why, later in the post. But for now let's look at what I would do.

     So....there's been a violent breach of your home. Either a door has been kicked in, or a window has been smashed in and bad guys are coming into your home with bad intentions. What do you do? How do you react? I know how I would react.  I would arm myself, position myself between my family and the threat, take cover, and engage the threat with a reasonable level of force. Would that be legal? I don't know, I hope so. I'll worry about the legality later. If it's not legal....I can get out of jail, I can't get out of dead. So let's break the reaction down into manageable pieces, because in our scenario...a lot has happened in the last 90 seconds.

         First, I'd arm myself. Why would I arm myself first? Because I believe that to evaluate a dangerous situation then go arm myself is backwards, and takes a lot more time. It allows the bad guys to gain momentum, allows them to possibly gain scene dominance, and allows time for the reactions of my wife and children to breakdown into chaos. This will create more danger for my family, and put them in harms way longer and more frequently in the long run. There are three rules to being the winner of a gun fight: 1- Don't be there when it happens. 2- If you're there when it happens, have a gun.  3- Be the one who fires the first accurate shot.

      Secondly, I'd position myself between my family and the bad guys. Or between my family and the closest threat to them if there are more than one threats. This would most likely be on the upstairs landing opposite the children's rooms and looking down onto the front staircase. Our family plan for this kind of thing involves getting to the children's rooms, which share a bathroom between them. Closing and locking both bedroom doors, and moving into the specified "safe room" bedroom through the bathroom doors, closing and locking them as they go. Once into the "safe room", they are to slide a heavy piece of furniture in front of the door, blocking entrance into the room and providing cover should stuff go really wrong. The furniture is already sitting on those hard plastic discs used to move furniture over carpet, so it's easy enough for two children, or my wife, to push it 5 feet to block the door. Once the furniture is moved, they are to call 9-1-1 from the hard line phone inside the room, and not open the door no matter what they hear happening outside.
    
     Next I would take cover. I'm already at the top of the stairs, so I'm in an elevated position to start with. That's a good thing, ask a combat veteran why. My cover would most likely be concealment behind a corner of a wall sticking out, but some concealment is better than no concealment. What's the difference you ask? Cover will stop a bullet, concealment will not stop a bullet but makes it hard for your adversary to see you. Thereby making it hard to apply gun fight rule #3 to your butt. Firing from cover is a skill, and you should definitely learn it. It's one of those responsibilities of owning a firearm. Being able to use it effectively, and minimizing the danger to others around you.

     Last, I would engage the threat with whatever force I thought was necessary to neutralize the threat. Hopefully they'll turn out to be unarmed idiots who kicked in the wrong door, realized the home was occupied and run like hell.....hopefully. Otherwise, I'm going to actively engage the threat. That means I would shoot them until they were either on the ground and not moving, or had fled my home. That's it in a nutshell. At the end of the day, your goal is to not bury members of your family.

     In our scenario we went from condition white directly to condition red. Hopefully you'll hear the dog going nuts, and go to condition yellow. Then see people you don't know looking into your windows or jimmying your door and go to condition red. This will give you time to react, put your plans into effect, arm yourself, and get your family into a safer place, and call 9-1-1 before the trouble finds it's way into your home. Hopefully that's how it will happen, if it happens at all. Hopefully it'll never happen in the first place.

     Lets discuss what I would arm myself with and why. I would have a Glock 23, and a flash light. Why a G23 you ask? Because it's what i have, it's what i carry everyday, and most importantly....it's what i have trained with. A lot. Why it is the gun I have is a discussion for another day. The bottom line is it's what I have in my hand, or near my hand, or accessible to my hand within 30 steps, when the trouble starts. It has night sights on it, and I keep a flashlight beside it all the time. The point is, have something handy you can defend your family with. A stick, a can of pepper spray, a slingshot, a pot of boiling grits, anything besides harsh language and a cell phone.

     If you can't have a firearm in your home, or you simply don't want a firearm in your home....I understand that. Honestly I do. Have SOMETHING. Review gunfight rule #2. While we are in the mindset of understanding, understand the bad guys to aren't going to throw down their guns, and one of them isn't going to leave so it's a fair fight. Understand that bad guys going into a home invasion expect there to be violence, expect to be the ones dishing it out, and are equipped to do so. Understand that a burglar who gets trapped in your home by you unexpectedly coming home or waking up and going to "check out the noise", if he is a 2 strike offender....or even if he's not, will most likely kill or seriously injure you to get away. Understand that if you comply to a home invasion, or unsuccessfully resist it, you and your family will most likely be killed or seriously injured. Understand that once someone in your family gets seriously hurt or killed, the rest of you are witnesses against the bad guys, and will be dealt with accordingly. Understand that it's all or nothing in most cases.

     Here are some of my recommendations:

• Get a firearm to defend your home with. Learn to use it. Practice with it regularly. Shooting is a perishable skill. Practice in all weather conditions in all light condition, practice clearing jams, practice reloading.
• Have a plan for your family to follow. Practice it with them three times in a row every 6 months. Play the bad guy and have your family react. You'll learn things to improve your defense, and your family will learn to react better.
• Have good home security systems and practices in place.
• You can buy yourself time with good practices in place, make the most of it. Act swiftly, act decisively.
• Have your house number painted on the curb in contrasting colors next to your mailbox. Make sure the mailbox also has your house number prominently displayed on it, as does your front door. If you call for help, make sure first responders can find your house. 
• Have a flashlight handy in every bedroom. While a flashlight can give away your position to the bad guys so can tripping over an end table, sprawling out on the floor, and losing your gun.

Again, I'm not an expert, and I don't play one on the Internet. Always survive to fight another day.