Your Home IS Your Castle…PROTECT IT!

Good morning guys! We hope today finds you and yours in great shape and spirits. Isn’t it wonderful that the good Lord sees fit to bless us with another day! I tell you guys what, he sure smiles on our family!

Well, let’s change gears today somewhat. Let’s talk about protecting your home. I know, I know, this subject sparks many debates Nationwide, but I have to tell you, the liberal mindset of gun control and the arguments they present, just don’t seem to make much sense to Deb and I.

First off, if there ARE armed intruders in your home, then dialing 911 just doesn’t seem to comfort us in the least. Yes, 911 does have its place, BUT, it DOES NOT protect YOU, or YOUR family IF your home has been chosen as a mark by the criminal element.

Let’s get real here for just a second. If an armed intruder, or intruders enter your home, at night (daytime as well), one thing is completely obvious…they’re not stopping by to say hello, how are ya! If they have the balls (sorry, but nothing else seemed appropriate), to come forcibly into your home to rob you or worse, you can bet your bottom dollar they REALLY don’t want to leave any witnesses, right? You betcha I’m right!

So, with this in mind, AND intruders are already in your home, then simply dialing 911 doesn’t seem like the appropriate action to take. Again, it has its good side, and many of them as a matter of fact, but it doesn’t provide protection for you and your family at THAT moment. Your response, and your actions, both are in your hands…RIGHT THEN.

Yes, while you’ve prepared, or armed yourself to defend your home, and your own lives, you or your spouse CAN call 911 and have the police responding to your threat as well, but, I’m guessing the VERY best scenario, is them being able to get to your home in say, 4-5 minutes. It depends on their situation at the time as well.

Are they on another call, are their enough officers on duty, what if, God forbid, they’re involved in an accident in route? All these figure into a police response to armed intruders in your home. Think about that for a minute or two. Do you REALLY want to put you, and your family’s lives into everything just falling into a “perfect scenario” for the police to respond to your call? We’ve decided the answer to that question in our own regard is simply…NO, we surely don’t!

Too many times today gun control is declared, “THE ANSWER,” by our liberal counterparts. Not so says I. There is an old saying that is very appropriate at this point…if guns are outlawed, THEN, only outlaws WILL HAVE GUNS! Comprende?

Do any of you REALLY think that if our guns were taken from us, that the criminal element wouldn’t still have, or have access to guns? Gimme a break guys, if you believe no to be the correct answer here. If you do believe this, then you’ve already fallen into the trap. The trap being the proposed “Socialist Utopia” of this perfect, everybody loves everybody world. Please….

Let me say this quickly. Deb and I both were raised around guns. Our children were raised around guns, and our grandchildren are now being raised around guns. This IS our right as American citizens, no matter what ANYONE tries to tell you differently!

We all ARE law-abiding, hard-working, responsible, freedom loving, people. We like to hunt, fish, and enjoy shooting on the range. Shooting to us, is like any other sport you enjoy. Our kids and grandkids do as well.

To us, there’s not too many things we enjoy more than getting out on the range and plinking a few cans. You’re outdoors, in the sun and fresh air, and spending good quality time with just Deb and I, or our family and friends. To us, this is a way of life…

Now Deb and I are not, nor claim to be experts in gun training, nor have we taken any type of self-defense training classes, though for the most part we believe in them. Our experience and knowledge come from years of being around guns, handling guns, using guns, and taking care of our guns.

With this being the case, we’ll share today our thoughts on “protecting our home.”

If Possible, Defend on Ground of Your Own Choosing

In Deb and my minds, we believe full-heartedly that if broken into by armed intruders, our best bet is to defend our home…right in the confines of our bedroom. This has many advantages.

First off, you know the layout of your room. There are times this may not be the case, one example is simply sitting in your living room watching TV. Today, unlike in the past when people most times broke into your homes while you weren’t there, or, at least tried to break-in discreetly, by jimmying a window or door.

Not so today in many documented cases. Today they come to your home and literally kick your door in! Home invasion I believe is the correct terminology. Regardless of the terminology, it becomes instantly a life and death proposition.

Quickly, we both keep guns in hands reach after dark. We didn’t create this situation…society did. In our humble opinion, we feel it’s better to have a gun in close proximity and NOT need it, than to NOT have a gun handy, and REALLY need it. Kinda like changing the oil in your car…it’s a preventative maintenance in our opinion.

Secondly, you see on TV people going through their homes shining lights in an attempt to find the intruders…not us. We’ll wait on them…AND CALL 911! BUT, we’re for sure armed while waiting on a police response.

In our household, there’s only Deb and I at home, so if you have children you may want to have a game-plan in place IF you’re broken in to. Everybody’s situation may be a little different than others, but we strongly suggest you have a plan that’s AT LEAST been discussed in place…to suit your own needs.

We have what I guess could be described as layers of home defense. The first being our yard is fenced, and protected at night by Susie, our little yellow cur dog. Both are deterrents.

We also took out every screw that was in our doors frame. All were little 1/2 to ¾ inch wood screws. We replaced them, even the doors inside our home with 3 inch wood screws. Why? Strength! The screws imbedded deeper into the frame, or even catching studs, will give you far superior strength in case of someone attempting to forcibly enter your home.

Next, if you’re coming into our home uninvited, you will have to defeat our alarm system. Motion detection, along with entry detection, whether it be attempted door, or window entry. Yeah, occasionally you will have “false alarms” with your motion detector, but these are few and far between.

This has happened to us three times over the past 4 years. Each time, being a bug, believe it or not. A spider spinning a web in front of the detector, or possibly just a fly that happened to fly in front of it, have set off our motion detector in the past.

On each occasion, I did leave the sanctuary of our bedroom to check it out, but only after our alarm system company had called to check on Deb and I, which I have to say on each occasion, was actually very promptly!

When they’d call, Deb would stay on the line with them in our bedroom armed, while I, armed as well, would go check things out with Cheyenne, our red-nosed pit. All in all, I consider our alarm system a very important role in our home defense.

Once I had “cleared the house,” Deb would let them know we were fine, and they’d then get off the line. I have to give a shout out to ADT, our alarm company, because they have been outstanding in their service to us! Thanks ADT, you guys are great!

This brings us to Cheyenne. She is also a major player, just as Susie in defending our home. She stays in the bedroom with us, and is that other set of eyes and ears! Plus, her eyes and ears are so superior to ours as well.

This gives us two layers of protection from our dogs, inside and out. There are times that Susie barks while we’re in bed. We hear her, I mean she’s out there barking. There are so many critters runnin around out here at night, that Susie can hear or see, and her response…is to bark. Granted, and we understand that.

The point here is this though. Cheyenne hears her as well, and once more, much better than Deb or I. She also distinguishes much more so than we do, the type of bark Susie is emitting. So, if Cheyenne hears Susie barking a different sort of bark, she is aware of this, and alerts us.

Alerting us is our main reason for our dogs. We’re getting a little older, and maybe our hearing isn’t what it used to be, so, through our dogs, we can, and will be alerted. Plus, although both dogs are very good natured in regards to people, I just believe that both, if feeling that Deb and I are threatened, would probably go on the offensive against the threat as well.

Now, this brings us to the scenario that armed intruders have gotten past our fence, Susie, and gained access to our home. Whether or not they defeated our alarm system really has no bearing, because we still have Cheyenne’s eyes and ears to alert us, if all else failed. We believe she would not fail us in such a situation.

First off, we live on the second floor of our home, and by this, feel an entry from an upstairs window, or door out to our balcony, miniscule, but have taken precautions for such, regardless. Prepare…this is a key word in any type of home defense!

When we go to bed, we first lock our bedroom door, then slide TWO of the old style door stops underneath the door. You know the type, you slide them under the door, then kick em a couple times to insure strength.

We then put a metal door stop (kinda like a club on your steering wheel), for further protection. It goes under the door knob, then runs down to the floor. It is a metal bar that when installed nightly, gives your door more strength against being kicked in.

All of these can be removed in under 5 seconds if we had to leave the house for whatever reason…fire, etc.

Now for my main reason of protecting our home from our bedroom. IF, you had armed intruders in your home, no matter how many, if you’re defending from your bedroom, then numbers make absolutely NO difference!

Why you ask? First consider the statement, analyze it for a moment, then see if it becomes clear to you. Why, defend our home from our bedroom?

The doorway. It’s the only access the intruders will have to get to you…through the door. Whether there are 5-6 intruders, or only two…they HAVE to come through the door, right? So IF they have to come through the door, what does this mean? Simply, they can only come through…ONE AT A TIME!

Suddenly, the number of intruders has no bearing at all in the defense of your home. You see that now? They will have to gain entrance into your bedroom/stronghold singly! That’s just what your bedroom would be at that moment…your stronghold, and by this being the case, the odds of Deb and I, being injured or worse, has been reduced dramatically!

WE CAN, AND WOULD defend our home, but…on OUR TERMS! To get to us, you’d HAVE to come through that doorway…one at a time! So, we’d fight, but it would have been forced upon us. The moral here is simple, yet ironclad.

If at all possible, if forced to fight…then fight on your own ground of choice, and on your own terms! By this, you’ve turned the tables of POSSIBLY being successful in a fight, to PROBABLY being successful in such a fight!

By this, the odds of your survival have been increased many times over. In a life and death situation, you want to stack the odds just as highly in your favor as you can. It is…life or death.

A good point I’d like to add to this is a movie Deb and I just watched a few nights back. It re-enforces my belief in our bedroom being our stronghold, and your having to gain access to Deb and I through…the doorway.

It is called “300.” It is a story about a very inferior, in numbers, group of men from Sparta, facing a vastly superior number of Persians. Although in the movie, the men from Sparta were ultimately defeated, through betrayal, they held off the mass numbers of Persians against all odds.

How? By forcing the Persians to…come to them. Not only coming to them, but the ground they chose to fight on was of their own choosing as well!

The ground they defended was but a small gap. By this, they funneled the Persians into their trap, or into fighting once again, on their own ground, chosen for its defensive importance. This being a narrow gap, thereby the Persians were not able to unleash their hordes of vastly superior numbers, but were forced to try and enter the gap, or in our case doorway, to get to the defenders.

Numbers no longer mattered, because only so many could enter the gap, or killing zone, at a time.

I told Deb while watching this, “Now, do you see why I put so much importance into forcing armed intruders into our home having to COME through that doorway in order to get to us? Numbers all of a sudden, have hardly any, if at all, importance. We fight on ground of our own choosing.”

We hope today that you guys have taken something from this. This topic, though by no means one any of us enjoy talking about, has become a very pertinent topic today…home defense.

Again, Deb and I aren’t the cause of discussing this today, or even can we say we enjoy talking about it. BUT, in today’s world, this is a direction we’ve taken to defend our home and our family. This kind of discussion takes place simply…because of our society.

It is sad to feel we need to share this with you, but in today’s world people, you better at least consider this happening to you. You can’t pick up a paper, turn on the TV, or tune in on a radio without hearing of another example of someone being killed through violence.

As I stated earlier, it’s better to have a gun and NOT need it, versus NOT having a gun and suddenly finding that you are in desperate need of it. To Deb and I, this is a no-brainer.

We look forward to hearing back from you guys, pro or con, in regards to today’s post. This is how Deb and I intend on handling a bad situation, if forced upon us, and is not considered appropriate for all. We all have different circumstances.

We do hope though, that it will possibly awaken those who don’t have a plan, to at least consider one, from your own situation. All knowledge you guys have on this subject would be greatly appreciated, not just by Deb and I, but I’m sure everyone.

We wish you all the very best, and God Bless you and yours! Also, ole Deb say to keep a smile on your face, and one in your heart!

Dub and Deb