Armed Attitude in Home Defense

Try this on for home protection especially when you have children in the house.

If someone, you think, has broken in, and you have a gun, plan to possibly go down with them... if need be. In not taking them down, because of thinking no matter what, you mustn't get damaged in some way or killed too, you have left things open for them to continue on into your house for other family members, or doing this again in another house.

Intruder, or unexpected family?

Take the bad guy down with you if need be. But take him and only him (or her) down.

Police run into this at a far higher rate of incidence than civilians. Yes, even today. They need to try more to protect themselves, to go home at the end of their shift. But not to the point of shooting innocent people, "accidentally". But that's another issue than I'm addressing here today.

There are various gadgets, devices, programs you can have to help other than a gun, but we're talking about a gun here for now. Still, do check out options. Anything you can add to your home is a plus for you and a minus for intruders.

Police have protections civilians, certainly ones in their own home in the middle of the night have. Police have access to ballistic vests, other police, communications, an active network supporting them and so on. And training. As we've seen, not always such great training. It is the nature of their job they may fire on someone innocent, but that has happened too often.

However, when some stranger breaks into your home, they have abdicated the right to being innocent. If they have a weapon, even more so. Unless they are not a stranger....

With that in mind, always validate your target before shooting. Validate also what is behind the bad guy in the case that on the other side of the wall behind him, when you shoot your .44 magnum (or some other ridiculous weapon for home defense), may be your child whose head you just blew off after you killed the intruder.

THINK. Think ahead of time, be proactive, so you have to think less when it's hard to think during an action.

First thing I was taught about using a gun was... "use the right tool for the right job". An assault rifle is NOT agood home defense weapon. A magnum is not a good home defense weapon. A shotgun with proper loads is. Certain handguns are, and with proper loads. You do not want to pass through walls, or houses into other houses. That's kind of paramount. Certainly if you live in a neighborhood close to other homes.

Second? Verify your target. Dark? Lighten it up. One thing nice about smart speakers like Alexa? You can say things like, "Alexa, turn on the living room lights." And voila. An intruder standing in a lit room, their worst nightmare.

Third? Verify what is behind your target (Third plus? What is behind that?). If a wall is behind an intruder, what is behind that wall? You spouse? Child? Children? A window, and beyond that your neighbor's bedroom window? THINK!

Safety first. Always

VERIFY your target. NEVER do "sound shots" (shooting at sounds visually unverified). IF you know exactly what is on the other side of a wall and you can penetrate that wall, that is a consideration, but if you do not have a positive ID on a target, you are always taking a risk. And this is all about risk analysis and acting correctly for the moment.

This stuff is great in movies, great in reality if you're a professional and in the right environment. Look. It's tough. Cowards don't do well with this. They love sound shots. Shooting into the dark.

Part of the problem we're seeing with both police and citizens is they are trying to walk away unscathed. So they shoot too soon. Too often. Before proper verification, before validation. Lacking proper target acquisition and control.

Yes, this all takes practice, not simply gun ownership. That is one of our biggest problems in this country, the 2nd Amendment and all. The "right" to gun ownership without enough verification and education and training. Even cops get it wrong. So an untrained citizen? A disaster waiting to happen. Even with training, you can screw this up royally. So why not take the training and decrease the risk? Do walkthroughs of the house, run through scenarios. Like any good Boy Scout, Be Prepared.

Sounds great surviving a gunfight unscathed. We all want to live (barring ISIS type believers).

But in trying to make a real life and death scenario into a videogame and not real life, in seeing guns as toys and not manslaughter machines, is childish, ignorant, immature.

This is where you have to be prepared if you own a gun. If you may actually be in a gunfight. IF you OWN a gun, you MAY actually end up in a gunfight. IF you do not own a gun, odds are you never will be.

It's not only a gun you own just in CASE you MAY ever be in a gunfight. Ownership does not and simply cannot realistically guarantee your safety. That is magical thinking.

"I own a gun, God will protect me." Next up for you with that belief? The coroner looking at your cold dead gun empty hands on a slab in the morgue.

Wake up. Deal with it. It sucks. But it's reality. And any time you are dealing with lethal force, you are dealing directly with reality. This isn't your partisan reality where your mistaken beliefs take time to damage you and even then you can rationalize them away. A bullet is one of the great equalizers and forces of reality there is.

Do not think that grabbing a gun and blindly firing on an intruder in the dark (or is it your son or daughter home from college unexpectedly?), will work out just fine for you without proper training, preplanning, and preparation of the entire family who lives with you.

Could it? Sure. Do you want to rely on maybe though? Or take the time to increase the odds and decrease the risk of firing a weapon in a house and merely hoping it will all be OK?

Because the other end of that argument could very likely be that you just shot your child. Or in the case of the police, someone else's.

If It Weren't for Irony, Would I Have This Appreciation?

I was married once upon a time, or two. I had met a woman I found quite amazing. She, for some reason, found me quite amazing. That happens in life sometimes. More for some than others, to be sure. We were together for a while. For a while things were, amazing. Then? Then they simply weren't.

It's an old story. Many have lived it.

We split up. It wasn't pretty. She was, however. It wasn't. In fact in some ways, she wasn't. I was miserable. she was angry. And no, I didn't do anything anyone would say is something. What happened can be understandable. But any adult would see that what happened was unethical, immoral and fattening. And not in a good way.

The thing is, what is important is... after she left, after it was all over, other than the fact that we had a daughter between us, I continued living in our house. I wanted continuity for the kids. And maybe for me some, too. After a while the kids were fine and we really needed to move. But I didn't. You see, I didn't get that. That they needed to move, that I needed to move.

Finally I tried to sell the house. But the housing market bubble burst. This was back in 2006. That's when it started to go south for me. The house dropped $140,000 from where it was. It had doubled from where I had bought it, and it lost a lot that next year or so. Eventually, with two mortgages, I was under water. I couldn't sell. It sucked. Ten years later I tried to sell it again.

And it sold this time. I didn't make much on it but at least I got out from under it, I got out from under the second mortgage, I got out from under living in the house my ex wife and I bought together.

During the week I moved out, my SUV broke down. Back in 2000 I had bought her the SUV. She'd had a Ford Ranger truck for years and it was falling apart. The paint was peeling. She had used it all up. She was an internationally certified horse trainer and riding instructor. She used up that truck that she had gotten before she had even met me. She deserved the SUV. It was nice, fancy, dependable. It looked nice, it had the extras package. And it wasn't cheap.

When she left it surprised me that she said she didn't want any of the cars. So I got them.

Long story short, during the time when I was moving after having finally sold the house, during the week I was moving to a new house, the SUV broke again. Several hundred dollars later, it broke again. A few hundred later it broke again that same week.

I finally had it. I parked it and called the dealer where I have taken my cars for years (and shameless plug for Liberty Bay Auto in Poulsbo, WA). Another long story short (I was actually able to get it started again and simply drove it the whole mile over to their shop), I traded in the originally $32,000 1998 Nissan Pathfinder LE to them for $100 and got myself a nice and much newer little car that I love now oh so much.

My point in all this being?

I'd had my heart ripped out by my ex. I lived for years in the house we had decorated, had remolded together and had bought together. I had two of her cars, both of which broke down before I moved and one had to be towed, while the other had to be traded cheaply in on another car. I had also had another car too. A turbo, vroom, vroom. What a car! But the engine blew.

So I finally moved out of that house we had bought together.

Finally I had a new house, new car, and no more old cars breaking down anymore. I also have a 2006 Harley which I bought a few years ago and it's mine, all mine. I have no major remembrances of my ex any longer swimming around my mind. I had a house in the woods, on a couple of beautiful acres. I now have a house on maybe an acre, with an awesome view of part of Puget Sound.

Nothing about this place reminds me of my ex.

And then after we moved in, across the street from us, in the house on the water with a dock, a new family moved in. At first I thought, fine. Good for them. And then it happened.

They pulled up and parked a horse trailer out front on a road too small so that it was technically illegal to park it there. It sat there, day in and day out. We live on a tiny paved road with not lots of room for cars parked on either curb (no curb anyway) and two way traffic still needing to be able to amble along. I checked the law. Parking on this road is illegal. You need to have a driveway. Odd. I know.

So it's extremely obvious it's sitting there when we come and go. Or I look out a window.

See, I have a huge picture window with an awesome view. And right there, right out front, day in and day out, unable not to see it... is that horse trailer. Which by association requires that the people, or at least the woman wearing riding gear type clothing must be another "horse person".

Did I mention my ex was a horse trainer? And riding instructor? That when we were first living together I had moved into her apartment in the front of a huge modern horse barn with over sixty-two horse stalls, a round pen, an arena, washing stalls, offices, a couple of modern apartments, etc., etc., etc. It was a sizable horse farm.

My ex had worked so hard, before sunrise to long after sunset, that on Sunday mornings at 5AM I would get up in my bathrobe and even in the frigid winter air, in my bathrobe and slippers, push along the wheelbarrow and feed all of the horses for her so she could sleep in one day a wake. Myself, I had to commute an hour each day into Seattle and it was a brutal commute.

We lived upstairs in the barn. So I could go out through our back laundry room into the upstairs part of the barn above all the horse stalls. I could go to each stall above it, drop down hay, timothy, grain or whatever the horse needed according to its note on the stall chute, and then go to the next horse.

Then I'd go back to the apartment, crawl back into bed, freezing in the winter, next to a lovely warm and attractive naked body that would appreciatively snuggle up next to me to warm me in appreciation. Something I always found amazing, as I was freezing at times I'm sure. But such was the appreciation she felt for my efforts. It was just one of those experiences that both found incredibly rewarding. That made life just a little bit better.

And now, all I have is that horse trailer that simply won't go away.

UPDATE: About a week after I wrote this, they sold the horse trailer! And my new experience in my new life finally, continued on.