What if you can't lock yourself in?

you might want to decide whether it's easier for you to get downstairs, or for the family member to get upstairs. You and the family member need to decide on one room for you to defend, then by all means practice defending it. Locking yourself in is ok, but not a requirement. stay on with 911, and they can hear you verbally warning the threat to stay out of that room, and that you have a gun, and that you will shoot......... and all that........

 

Wow. This is a really weird question, because a lot of people live with family members in their house anyways, they just don't segregate the floors/rooms/what have you.

Um, first off, any room can be made a "lock yourself in" type of room if you have a little bit of money, some time and a small tool assortment.

Cell phones have done away with the whole need to run a hard phone line to the armored closet thing. Cell phone, built in texting, GPS, some even have live internet connections. Plus, you don't have to worry about an enterprising person pulling your power meter on the side of your house, killing your answering machine, cordless phone charger and basic household powered units to allow multiple communications at one time, like a cable modem/router or a DSL unit.

Now, I have played with an "RF Identifier" a few years ago, that basically over rode the signal of a common cell phone carrier with another larger carrier with a footprint to stamp out others to allow, say, a movie to be watched without some jackass talking about where the party is it. It worked great at the time, but that unit won't work worth a damn today because of the change in freq's. You need an expensive one now to be able to drown out the new cellphones. Plus, they heat up like crazy and have limited "blocking" range. Plus, they are now illegal as hell... LOL If you are dealing with someone that has one of these, you are going to be in trouble anyways, because they are prepared.

Next, all you need is a bottle neck. Anything will do, but the better chance you have of "covering" one place, the better chance you have of defending it.

If I am in a room with one door in/out, like a bathroom, and it has a small, second story window to allow the venting of air, but is kind of small and hard to get to, chances are good, if you want me, you are coming through that door to get me.

It doesn't leave me anyplace to run, but if I have, say a 12 gauge and a handgun with some extra ammo, how long are you willing to take to get me before the police show up? How many bullet holes are you willing to risk getting in you?

Yeah, you could pull some crazy Terminator crap like coming through the wall, hoping you don't ram your T-1000 arms into the 2x4 wall joices, but I kind of doubt you are going to do that with your first strike attempt.

Recently we built a brand new Federal Reserve Bank that will process all the money shipments for the local banks here in the Seattle area. New money comes into the FRB, then non-discrete carrier trucks take it out to banks. They return with money to be destroyed. Repeat.

Well, they Engineer these things pretty damn hardcore. This thing wil handle a spec'd 10.4 Earthquake and be able to open and remove the cash inside within minutes of the 'quake being over. Needless to say, security is off the charts.

Before it was done, I went and did a Q/C walk through with a couple of guys from the site. My "official purpose" was to inspect the work done by my crews and make sure we met contract standards. My reason was to see what goes on inside one of those places... LOL

Everywhere you go in there, there are choke points. You turn to go down a hallway, the door at the end is a choke point. You bring a cart with you to load money, there isn't room for you and the cart, to be side by side to get to the access card slot, so you have to pull the cart to the doors. Or you need two people. The front dude is dog meat the minute that door opens. There is about 10 to 12 inches different between the carts they use and the width of the doors/halls. They don't have exposed jams like you do at your house. The door is part of the walls running down the hallway and all the doors inside are steel pocket doors, so the door is braced by the wall itself. You can't bash it in, well, you can but...it will cost you time, and bodies. There are firing slits EVERYWHERE. Gun ports with locking cylinders for one way shooting. Vents up off the ground, pointing down into the hallways, where you don't even have to look, you just stick the barrel of an M4 into the hole and open up. It's ugly. It would be a blood bath...

There whole goal isn't to make it impossible for you to steal the money. Their goal is to make it so costly for you to attempt it, that by the time you are done, there isn't any of you left to actually spend the money.

The same can be true for your Safe Room. Your goal isn't to live there forever. Your goal is to get to the other side of a choke point and make the motivation of getting whatever it is you have ( your body, your money, your very blood in the event of Vampires ) so off the charts costly for anyone wishing to try and take it, that they think better about it and leave before they can get it. Or die trying.

JD

 

Sorry guys-- but if someone is in my house... I'm not locking myself in my room while my 2 year old is down the hall-- I'll have my wife call 911, I'm grabbing my 1911 and going to go secure my 2 year son.

Not being macho here-- but if someone gets past my two 75 lbs Boxers (that are very protective, and sleep in the house.) then the guy(s) in my house mean to harm my family and need to be stopped.

It's not a panic room time for me, sorry but that's not an option.

God I prey that never happens.

 

Well, that wasn't what I had in mind when I made that post, but I see what you are talking about JP.

I was answering about the ability to create a safe room or bottleneck within the house.

Not really what I had in mind for me personally if someone gets past my 100+ pound German either - They are there with bad intentions at that point. Time for the gloves to come off....

JD

 

Anyone who lives in a house and doesn't have a medium/large dog is a fool and two or three is even better in case of multiple dirtbags .

The best breed by far from my experience is a German Sheppard even if it is only a mix breed .

Wonderful with kids naturally protective of their territory and double of their family especially kids .

We had breaking while owning a Shep mix when I was kid and the damage he did to said scumbag was impressive "Blood and clothing everywhere" and he chased the dirtbag off into the night and didn't come back till the next morning for all we knew or ever will he killed the SOB which is fine with me .

Years later we had a brother and sister pair of full breds and a very large stray was chasing my niece up the driveway , they burst out of the door attacked in unison so perfectly you would have thought it was Choreographed ripped the crap out of that mutt and chased it off of the street to never be seen again .

As an adult I had another mixed shep and a neighbors Doby attacked him while he was in the yard on the his chain , the chain was the only thing that kept that Doby alive and a year or so later a neighbor with the shortmans syndrome had a German Rott about a year old and he tried his luck with my shep , this time he wasn't on the chain and he about killed that dog . Neighbor was pissing and moaning about his dogs Doctor bills and how he was thinking of suing us I told him to keep his dogs azz out of my yard and he wont get eaten .

And I don't train dogs to fight as a matter of fact with sheps about all they get is potty training and love and attention .

Sheps can hold their own with just about anything out there .

 

Are they capable of defending themselves with a gun ?

If it's of any comfort when a breakin happens and your dog does her job don't worry to much about her , just because they may intend to shoot her doesn't mean they will be successful .

In the first incident I mentioned the person gained entry to our screen porch by cutting a screen and climbing in we found a large pocket knife on the floor . So they had a weapon of considerable size in hand yet when the dog returned home the next day he had zero wounds on him , was covered in blood but not a drop was his .

Also dogs are pretty tough even if shot .

We have a friend who works for animal control and just a month or so ago she responded to a Pit Bull attack call , cops had shot the dog 3-4 times with 45's and she had to take it back to her station and wait for a couple of hours for the licensed vet to come in and put the dog down . The dog was being put down because of all the people it had bitten that night and had been reported as a nuisance prior to this not because the wounds were necessarily fatal to it .

She has related many stories of dogs being shot by police and living and making a full recovery .

 

We don't have a dog that would attack anyone who snuck or broke in but (he's too small) but he does make lots of noise when someone comes near.

A couple of weeks ago he started barking at about 3 A.M., he's not one of those annoying lap dogs that never stop barking. In fact he hardly ever barks so when he does, there's someone out there. It turned out to be someone who ran out of gas on the state highway and was walking to the gas station.

I also don't have a room that I can lock myself in, nor would I if I had that room. I do however have a 12g pump with 00 buck and a 1911.

 

" A dog should be a warning device, not a claymore mine" -Col Jeff Cooper

 

There not , claymores wont chase you azz down and rip your throat out .

Cooper may have known about guns but he obviously didn't begin to understand how effective the dog can be .

Poor guy must have grown up with nothing but ankle biters and have had a wife to lazy to vacuum to keep the hair down and keep the house clean .

 

Yeah, they aren't stopping in for tea... cap them on the spot.

 

I couldn't agree more. My boxers are very protective of my family. I've SEEN my male catch 2 rabbits and from the time he caught each of them, it took about 2 seconds to break their backs. They have also driven off a bobcat.

My boxers never growl at anybody, but they growled at a former neighbor every time he walked out of his house 50 yds away. It turns out the neighbor had changed his name 4 times and had 17 arrests on his record. He had 2 counts of aggrevated assault and 1 arrest for possesion of drugs with the intent to sell. He was living off of a law suit and was fishing around the neighborhood to start another suit. He had harrassment charges filed against him by another neighbor and 18 neighbors testified against the loser. He left the neighborhood right after that and is not allowed in my neighborhood for 3 years.

 

Check this out! A home invasion in my city, that went BAD for the invaders. One DEAD, and the other in critical condition.

http://video.nbc5i.com/player/?id=289289

 

If you know EXACTLY how many intruders there are, and WHERE they are, go get 'em. If you don't know how many and where.... you could leave your family defenseless. Much easier and safer to defend one room, instead of an entire house.

Just my opinion, based on only my wife and I being in the house.

 

I saw that on the news the other day. Great story. They followed it up the next day with an apology from the dead BG's family.

 

GOOD! I hope the other one died...

 

My house is one big safe room. I will not retreat any further.
Back yourself into a corner and you will be loosing options.
Back into a bedroom and you're out of places to go.
I've never been in the service but I'm sure they teach you to not get pinned down and/or boxed in. Why would it be any different in your home??

You may say you're barricaded in your room. I'll say you're trapped in your room.


IMO. If they break in when you're there, they mean to do you harm or to threaten you with harm. Take the first opportunity, it may be you're only one. The longer you delay, the more time the BG has to figure out the situation.

I may be wrong but I don't believe in giving the BG a chance.

 

In a home defense situation, you're not fighting for a piece of strategic military valued real estate, and you're not fighting against an army of soldiers..... Most likely, you're up against one or two morons who want to steal something they can sell... They're not there for a long term siege. They want to get in, grab, and get out. It's easier to defend one room than it is an entire house.... especially (as I said earlier) if you don't know for sure how many intruders you're dealing with. My firearms and I are more than a match for one or two intruders in an area that they are not familiar with. Now if you find yourself in a situation where a carload of thugs are after you personally, they're not gonna pursue after the first few shots, and let you pick 'em off, they'll probably blow you up, or burn you out, or pick you off on the street.

Just my opinion, and I hope none of us need to defend our homes.