Combat Mindset and Self Defense #4

This is my 4^th installment of the posts on Combat Mindset and Self Defense. In the previous posts I have covered marksmanship, the actual definition of combat mindset as it applies to self defense, and lightly covered knowing your house from a tactical standpoint. In this post I will cover home invasions and things of importance that you will need to take into consideration when planning your home defense.

            First off when planning for home defense, I assume you have already gotten the poor idea of “This won’t EVER happen to me” out of your head. Home invasions are a fact of life now and the trend of home invasions, while the target house is occupied, is on the rise. The reason for this startling change of events is simple. Thieves have figured out that when the homeowners are home so is their wallet, checkbook, and jewelry ect. Not to mention if it is someone that is after more than your possessions, i.e. they want your wife, the best time to hit you is when you and your loved ones are at home in your comfort zone, where your guard is least active, especially after dark in the evening after you have had a nice big dinner and are lounging in your comfortable easy chair watching TV.

 There are no official home invasions statistics due to the fact that these are usually characterized under robbery, rape, assault ect. The best estimate though is that every year this variant of robbery accounts for 11% of incidents of theft that takes place in the United States. This is a startling figure as 11 out of 100 incidents of theft involve an occupied home being forcibly entered and robbed typically with weapons of some sort. Some other statistics taken from www.articlebase.com show that 1 out of every 5 homes will have a home invasion at some time.

Some of the more common ways for someone to break into your house includes posing as a delivery man, an utilities inspector, or someone looking for donations, also there is the obvious one where they just kick down your door (which is the one way that I prefer for them NOT to get into my house since I will not only have to clean up their blood from everywhere after I have shot them, I will ALSO have to fix my door which will piss me off). Here are a couple of simple ways to foil the first three methods. Have a chain on your door engaged before you open it and ask for official identification, if you are not expecting a package or an inspection call the company that they are from to verify that they are legit. Package delivery service persons are trained to show their ID upon request even to your peephole on your door or simply leave the package on your doorstep upon request. One of the major DO NOTS is for you to swing your door open all the way immediately upon hearing the knock.  Follow the above steps will have huge impacts upon your safety. If they kick down your door then you can assume that they are not there to chat or borrow a cup of sugar, so deadly force then becomes applicable if you feel your life is in danger.

Some people may call me paranoid but I have never really cared what people think, and that is why I always carry my weapon around the house with me. Every one that comes over to my house knows this and seems to be comfortable with it, and if not, well it IS my house after all. I refuse to be a victim, or have harm come to the woman I love, and in a violent home invasion there probably will not be time to grab your weapon and defend yourself, so instead of paranoid I prefer the word PREPARED. The way that I think about this is simple, how would I feel if something did happen and I wasn’t prepared and as a result my wife was hurt or even worse? I owe it to her to be as prepared as possible and if you have children then you owe it to them as well. Violence of action will carry the day in whatever precarious situation that you are in. Knowing within yourself that you have the capacity to kill to ensure the safety of yourself and your family is the singular most important thing in preparing for home defense. If you have not resolved this within yourself then the firearm that you possess will just be a liability to yourself and your family, no matter how much you train with it.