Lots of good advice here. The fear of calling the police due to the latenight actions of a pet is generally a strong emotion. I also think it is much harder to stay put than it is to grab-gun-and-go, since the adrenaline dump is intense when something goes crash in the night. Running drills in complete comfort and awareness is beneficial, but completely different. I have found that strategically placed mirrors are your friends. Identify weak points before it is a crisis (luckily your situation was a pseudo-crisis) and adapt your plan.
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Big Scare Tonight...
- Thread starter unshelledpilot
- Start date
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Yes, married, yes to planning (lots of conversation), no to drill, with the caveat that we've been married for nearly 12 years now (together for 4 before that) so we pretty much know what the other person is going to do by now. The kids even know what to do. Yeah, we're that kind of family.
Alarm system so you know if someone breached the exterior.
I think too many movies have folks thinking they can clear a house by themselves.
I'll leave this here:
[video=youtube_share;dy2VfUABMLs]http://youtu.be/dy2VfUABMLs[/video]
[video=youtube_share;TyMOBTWD5d0]http://youtu.be/TyMOBTWD5d0[/video]
I think too many movies have folks thinking they can clear a house by themselves.
I'll leave this here:
[video=youtube_share;dy2VfUABMLs]http://youtu.be/dy2VfUABMLs[/video]
[video=youtube_share;TyMOBTWD5d0]http://youtu.be/TyMOBTWD5d0[/video]
Yes, married, yes to planning (lots of conversation), no to drill, with the caveat that we've been married for nearly 12 years now (together for 4 before that) so we pretty much know what the other person is going to do by now. The kids even know what to do. Yeah, we're that kind of family.
That's great, and I know the feeling. I can even tell that when my wife discovers I'm blowing off all responsibilities tomorrow to golf, she'll probably throw a phone book at me. Just kidding, who has phone books anymore?
I know it can be tricky to get significant others into shooting. Since my wife had a previous terrifying experience, it was easy to lean on fear based marketing to drive the point home. Wonder if anyone has some suggestions of what worked for them to get spouses involved.
Maybe OP just needs to stage a fake break in.
It took years but with patience/persistence and an ever changing society all the woman on the wifes side are now shooters. They were a very anti-gun family due to a situation they experienced at a very young age. I have a harder time getting the BIL's out to shoot than the woman. They dig it once they started killing paper and hearing that steel ring.
assumptions about how things will go down is bad. I'm in our basement from ~9p-1a. With the kids and wife on the 2nd floor, the plan is a rapid clearing UP to get to them. Our stairs come up in the middle of the first floor, so lots of options. Figure out how to use doors to your advantage, which way/room a bad guy is more likely to enter, what cover spots to get to to best protect from multiple angles, etc. Always knowing that this situation very likely puts the baddie in between me and the ones I want to protect. Top down the plan is the opposite. Move forward to the kid's room and it becomes 100% defensive from there. What if I'm in the garage? Popping pop corn in the microwave? Arriving home after being away?
People think home defense they always think of being awaken during slumber, not startled while watching american idle....
-rvb
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If I'm in the basement and wife and/or kids are on the 2nd floor, I'm not going to just wait minutes for police and "hope" nothing bad is happening up on the 2nd floor. If I'm already in the same area as the family, then I'm 100% defensive (staying put) and waiting on the police....
can't assume that it's always going to happen in a way that waiting it out will be the right answer
-rvb
jblomenberg16
Grandmaster
OP, glad it was a false alarm. My wife and I have had a few of those and found similar holes in our plan. In our case, rather than a loud crash, our alarm system has gone off. In one case it was a door that wasn't fully latched and blew open during the night, and the other was a case where we set the motion detector, and it picked up my movements as I went to get a drink of water at 2am. As others have said, waking from deep sleep to the alarm means a massive adrenaline dump on top of the normal sleepy disorientation, and can cause you to do things that aren't smart.
We have young kids on the opposite side of the house from our bed room, so clearing quickly to get to them is a key priority for us. We've done a room clearing class together and have adjusted our plan to include both of us working together. That does 2 things for us:
1) Helps us watch our "six" as we move past a few parts of the house that have multiple entry / exit points that could conceal a threat.
2) Gets us both in the same location to "barricade" should we not find the cause of the situation as we make our way to the kids. Our alarm system automatically calls law enforcement within XYZ second of the alarm going off (there is some grace period in there for a false alarm or accidentally setting the system off). So our plan is to immediately get the kids safe and then let law enforcement do the work if we were not able to quickly determine the cause of the alarm was indeed "false."
We have young kids on the opposite side of the house from our bed room, so clearing quickly to get to them is a key priority for us. We've done a room clearing class together and have adjusted our plan to include both of us working together. That does 2 things for us:
1) Helps us watch our "six" as we move past a few parts of the house that have multiple entry / exit points that could conceal a threat.
2) Gets us both in the same location to "barricade" should we not find the cause of the situation as we make our way to the kids. Our alarm system automatically calls law enforcement within XYZ second of the alarm going off (there is some grace period in there for a false alarm or accidentally setting the system off). So our plan is to immediately get the kids safe and then let law enforcement do the work if we were not able to quickly determine the cause of the alarm was indeed "false."
I think the best thing to do, if I am alone and someone comes in the house is to quietly slip into a dark area with my firearm and wait for the BG to come to me. When BG walks into the room, strike a kitchen match on my whiskers and light a cigar before blowing him away. Maybe I would sit in a tall office chair with my back to the door. When BG comes in, spin the chair around with gun in hand, like in a James Bond movie. OK, now that you've read this, pour on the purple.
I'm gonna make an assumption here; those who say they would rather barricade than clear, you probably have fairly large homes. I live in a >2000sq ft home that feels smaller than that, so if someone is in the house, it would take almost no time to clear the home. Our plan has always been for my wife to grab the gun and get to the kids, while I take my gun and the dogs to clear the home. Well, the dogs would be the first responders, but I would be following relatively close behind.
jblomenberg16
Grandmaster
My logic is that once my wife and kids are safe and accounted for, not to take any additional risk. My home isn't overly huge and was pretty quick to clear when we had our false alarms. But what I realized in hind sight was that if I did a bad job clearing and was incapacitated before I could take care of any threats, that my wife and kids are now that much more vulnerable. I don't at all subscribe to the "hide and be a victim" school, but am a big fan of "don't do something stupid and get killed" methodology.
My eyes were really opened a few years ago when I took a room clearing class put on by one of our great trainers here on INGO. The setting for that class was a small 1000sq ft home with a basement. We took turns playing "hide and seek" so to speak. It was amazing how much of an advantage the person "hiding" has. In just about every case, the person in hiding was able to put a blue gun on the "seeker" and say "bang you are dead" before the seeker saw the person hiding. We did the scenario in two ways...the person hiding was a good guy and the person hiding was a bad guy. It didn't matter...either way if the person has a good secure hiding spot, they will almost always have the advantage since they can focus on a very specific point of entry vs. having to account for multiple potential hiding spots.
The other thing to remember is that you are most likely to know your home better than an intruder, so you'll know the possible lanes of approach, where the good hiding spots are, etc to where you can really maximize your advantages. That also means that you know where you are most vulnerable if you are forced to clear the house, and so must plan for that accordingly as well.
Take that for all its worth...I'm a normal every day civilian. There are certainly more folks out there with more training and experience on room clearing that might offer better advice. But to me, it all comes down to doing what I can to stay alive. Once I'm out of the fight...I can't fight back to defend my family.
My house is almost 3600 square feet spread out on 4 levels.
I have the benefit of 2 GSDs who will blaze the trail, but even without them, I would go. I'm simply not going to call LE every time I hear a bump in the night. I do not necessarily have to encounter the bad guy to know he is there. "Clearing" my house does not mean that upon finding out the bump in the night was cause by an intruder I am necessarily going to engage him either. But I do feel like I have a responsibility to determine someone is actually there before I start crying "wolf."
I think there's a vast middle ground between acting like a squad of soldiers seeking out Osama and cowering under the bed while one calls LE because the cat jumped down from the table and one heard the "thud." Some people are responding to some of the posts in this thread with a misplaced attitude of superiority/condescension over what they perceive as the motivation/intention of homeowners. I have no intention of playing hero for the sake of hero. But I operate on 2 immutable facts: my family comes first and I cannot in good conscience tie up emergency responders with unverified threats.
There is a deep and profound lesson here for everyone to learn....Cats are only good if they are used for rugs or they are stuffed and used as bookends. None of this wood have happened if this lesson was learned!
Some may think purple is needed...I don't know...is it?
Some may think purple is needed...I don't know...is it?
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