Quote:
Originally Posted by mcgeedo
markd4life offers very good advice.
If you're not experienced with guns, your best bet is to keep an unloaded prop that looks like a gun, for the reasons he mentions.
If you are experienced with guns, then you have to honestly answer the question to yourself "under what circumstances would I shoot someone." If the answer is "if they entered my home and threatened me or my family," then honestly look at that scenario. You will likely be in your living room or your bedroom when (if) it happens. Where would you and the members of your family likely be at that time. How much time would you have to get and load your weapon, and which way would you be shooting.
When I work out this scenario for myself, my best choice is an unloaded shotgun near the bed.
Another strategy you might want to consider is deterrence. An NRA bumper sticker on your car and maybe a discrete little sign on the gate to your back yard "Gun control is being able to hit what you aim at." A potential home invader might see all this and go on to your neighbor with the Obama bumper sticker, feeling he'd rather face an unarmed homeowner than an armed one.
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I have to disagree with almost every point of your advice here, except the deterrence one, although anyone assuming all Obama supporters are unarmed is in for an unpleasant surprise.
Under no circumstances am I going to show myself (and my toy gun) to an attacker of unknown armed status, who knowingly broke in to an occupied house. That sounds like a good way to get killed dead, and reminds me of a certain scene from Snatch. What exactly was the scenario that played out in your mind where representing an escalation to lethal force without being able to deliver was a good idea?
As for my personal scenario, as someone "experienced with guns", I currently have a 2-story house, with all bedrooms upstairs. If a glass break/door/window alarm downstairs goes off, the home defense plan is I do a quick armed recon to the top of the stairs--they turn, so I could hear but not see, and the same for anyone downstairs. While I am doing this, the wife gets the kid(s) all in the master bedroom. If I hear trouble, the wife calls the cops, while I yell down the stairs something to the effect of "Get out of my house, the cops are on the way, if you come up the stairs I will fucking kill you." I'm actually thinking about having a steel plate installed in the landing wall, so that I can have a perfectly secure perch that looks down on the stairs...having such an easily defensible choke point was one of the highlights of a 2-story floor plan in my mind. As an added bonus, since I would be shooting down on any baddies, overpenetration into the ground doesn't bother me, and I can choose rounds and weapons for effectiveness (also at the moment, there is just a dirt lot in front of my house.)
Castle doctrine not withstanding, I would question the sanity of anyone who would leave a defensible choke point between badguys and family, and try to sweep their house like a one-man SWAT team, just so someone doesn't make off with their TV.
If I lived alone, maybe, but the fact that one wrong move would leave my family undefended keeps me on strict defense.
Now, if someone is willing to break in while we are visibly downstairs in the living room, well...that is more trouble than I am willing to stay prepared for on a day-to-day basis. I solved this problem by moving to a classy neighborhood--home assaults of that nature are few and far between in the master planned communities of Gilbert. YMMV.