"Best Home Defense Tactics: Be Prepared to Protect " Topic

….Your Sanctuary

"Your house is your sanctuary, the place where you feel safe, where your family can develop in peace and harmony. Still, this doesn't mean that you won't be put in the situation to protect your happy place from various intruders who don't like to respect the sanctity of your own house. This is where the idea of home defense shows its value. Are you prepared to defense the place you hold most dear from intruders and perpetrators?…"
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Amicalement
Armand

It would also help if you know a few self defense techniques

I am laughing and crying at the same time over that statement.

The article also completely fails to mention the importance of refreshing one's training in the use the weapons it recommends.

I've got pistols, rifles, and various edged weapons … My only concern is what a mess I would make "servicing targets" in my house.

And I'm much too old to go into hand-to-hand combat when I can just shoot the "Sum s" !

As the saying goes "Intruders will be shot … survivors will be shot again."

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Most break-ins occur during the day, even the most stupid criminals don't want to try to break-in when someone is home, like the night, when EVERYONE is home, sleeping.

I'm all in favor of gun control…use BOTH hands!

Seriously, Guys…can't we keep religious views in check? What's wrong the more rational view of having a good dog, a stout lock and door, perhaps a camera on the porch or back door, and a good cell phone?

At least this is in utter drivel where the opinion deserves to be. Best? Sheesh.

What's wrong the more rational view of having a good dog, a stout lock and door, perhaps a camera on the porch or back door, and a good cell phone?

I got all of those save for camera on the porch. Even if/when I call the cops, it may take them more than a few seconds to get here. By that time I could be dead … But at least with my small arms. I probably have a better than even chance. Of saving myself, my dog and my property.

Based on my Infantry training, etc. … I'd just wait in the dark behind cover. Then open up as he comes thru the door. Unless he is already inside. Then I'd just shoot first and ask questions later. Again that may be just me …

Anybody creeping around my house in the dark risks tripping over one of many of my projects and may suffer serious injury. You've been formally warned… :-p

"Religious views"???

Someone has "jumped the shark".

A dog, unless it is a very well trained police or military war dog, will not keep an attacker or attackers at bay. Even those frequently get taken out by armed assailants.

Perhaps go James T. Kirk on them and have a self-destruct button to be used as a threat when cornered.

The irrational belief that a gun is the best protection to your safety despite a lack of empirical basis for that belief is akin to religion. Too many take it on faith that "guns are the best defense". I would call it a religion, in that one believes in a holy relic as a means of warding off evil.

>A dog, unless it is a very well trained police or military war dog, will not keep an attacker or attackers at bay. Even those frequently get taken out by armed assailants.

Care to cite some basis for believing this? you have any stats of how many home invasions occurred by an armed man, against a good stout locked door, a good dog, with police on the way that resulted in the harm of the occupant? I doubt seriously there are that many. Counter it with the numbers of folks who have seen an accidental death due to firearms to a child or mistaking someone for being a criminal. My guess is this fear of home invasion comes from watching too much TV.

Seriously, Guys…can't we keep religious views in check?

Where where?

I think you guys missed the point of my earlier argument, most break-ins DO NOT occur at night. During the day when you are away at work, no one is home. Even if the neighbors see someone going in they will think its just the exterminator. Why break-in at night when poppa and momma are home and poppa knows the combo to the gun safe?

A dog, unless it is a very well trained police or military war dog, will not keep an attacker or attackers at bay?
Do you have ANY idea how many serious attacks and deaths have resulted from dog attacks?

"The irrational belief that a gun is the best protection to your safety despite a lack of empirical basis for that belief is akin to religion".

You crack me up.

The best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with one. Nothing else works as well, and as we see sometimes daily, but certainly weekly, the bad guys with a gun are taken out by the good ones with them.

"Care to cite some basis for believing this?".

Lots of reports in the news. Not sure anyone is producing data, and if they are, they're probably not sharing it with the general public.

Police can take a very long time to respond to a call for help. Too many victims find that out, and the police just get to write the reports about the victims killed by their assailants after the fact.

Most doors and windows will not stop a criminal.

Sounds like you need better doors and windows!

Modern stuff is much harder to get through. Couple that with the fact that most people don't have anything worth nicking (pre-owned TVs and stuff are worth peanuts these days!), and most burglars have moved on to easier lines of work.

>Lots of reports in the news. Not sure anyone is producing data, and if they are, they're probably not sharing it with the general public.

So again, you are basing your view on faith and not from anything tangible that you have measured. Stating "Lots of reports" without actually being able to produce one is building on soft sand.

Perhaps, as an alternative to going whole hog in lethality, the better tool would be a electric cattle prod?

>A dog, unless it is a very well trained police or military war dog, will not keep an attacker or attackers at bay?
Do you have ANY idea how many serious attacks and deaths have resulted from dog attacks?

Dogs have been shown to deter criminals who will almost always pass by a house with a dog over one without, interviews with convicted burglars verifies this. As for home invasions vs burglary I would say the dog is still better for preventing unoccupied homes and will be of great assistance to occupied homes. I bet the numbers of accidental deaths in the home from dog attacks is quite small compared to the deaths from accidents involving firearms.

I own a pit bull. I have read pretty extensively on the subject. Yes, dog attacks sometimes occur, but the lethality of dog attack accidents is far less than that of gun accidents, and if you strip out dog attacks in the commons vs dog attacks in the home the number of accidents, they will fare far better than the situation with guns.

The statistics bear this out. If you are in possession of a gun in your home, you are more likely to have someone in your family killed by a gun from any cause, then if you have no gun at all.

The best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with one.

I'm from that line of thinking. And my dog is not an attack dog. She's more for barking and alerting me, if she hears something I can't or don't.

"So again, you are basing your view on faith and not from anything tangible that you have measured".

Nope, no "faith" involved here. Simple observations of hundreds, if not thousands of news reports, where 98%+ of the bad guys with guns are taken down by good guys with guns. Most are shot dead, but some are wounded. Very few bad guys armed with guns are taken down by other means, unless they run out of bullets, or commit suicide – we can discount both of those categories.

Also, honest law enforcement officers state the above is true, too.

Quite a few dogs are shot and wounded, if not killed by bad guys with guns.

Very few bullets fired at bad guys with guns are deflected by bullets fired by the bad guys at the incoming projectiles.

Do you have any idea how many owners are killed by their own guard dogs, when they turn on their owners for little or no reason?

Pit bulls are one of the major perpetrators of killings of their owners, so you might want to be extra nice to yours.

As for the family members killed by guns, a lot of that is suicides, and they don't seem to strip those out from the number of lives saved due to them vs. bad guys.

Even if they do, the anti-gun zealots, and their complicit media won't report that objectively, since they're on a mission to do away with one of our major rights included in our Constitution by our founding fathers.

Now you are the one cracking me up. I'll just add some virtual rolling of eyes to it.

>She's more for barking and alerting me,

That is her purpose, even more valuable than my pit bull's potential bite (which is probably nil, she is generally the friendliest I have. My lab is more aggressive.

Yeah, my dog is only about 11 lbs. But she knows her job is EW ! I don't need her for protection … just an LP/OP.

My problem is not listening to my dog closely enough, back home in Mn my Lab alerted twice in the night and my response was to tell her to be quiet and go to sleep, both times my car was broken into. Down here, my little Russell Terrier went crazy late one night, I did get up and look around the house though, saw nothing. When I left the house next morning I watched the police walking in and out of the huge hole left by a truck that rammed through the wall of a unoccupied house down the block and took all the newly installed appliances, I never heard it, but she did…
GOOD DOG!!

Thanks Legion