RT, I don’t recall any posts that accurately fit your “wait at home and ambush the nutjob” description. That, to me, holds an implication that the goal is to take out the nutter. For myself, and my reading of posters like Bricker (who is welcome to correct me) is a plan to take shelter, using such strategy as the home offers, while waiting for the police to intercept the aggressor. Having and using a gun is a last resort, applicable only if the nutter acts faster than the cops. Shooting him from hiding after he has made forcible entry to my home, followed by breaking through (in my case) one additional interior door, surely isn’t a 100% bet from my standpoint. And it isn’t the actual goal. But I like it better than my assessment of my chances if I just hunker without a gun. And better than my assessment of my chances if I try to just leave the area, given the uncertainties of predicting exactly how that will play out as I outlined up thread.
I concur with Bricker that nutter has low odds of hitting anyone if he hoses my house with gunfire. And such an act clearly obviates my worry that cops may be unable to act if said person offers the "I warn’t doin’ nothin’ " defense. Were he to fire at my dwelling then I, or a neighbor, or a cop would be justified in shooting him even before he broke inside. Not likely, but might happen, and fully legal if it did.
I think one can argue that one’s yard is part of one’s home. Fear Itself certainly does in a later post.
I think you’d only want the area of the walls for the first two feet, to be generous, because most people will drop to the floor, and most maniacal murderers will expect them to.
I took Fear’s suggestion as sarcasm or whoosh, not as a serious plan. Maybe I was wrong. But if so, I still think that makes him an outlier. For myself, I repeat, shooting the attacker is a last resort, not a goal.
I don’t know about 9mm, but a .357 Magnum will chew up a lot of bricks in short order. (The OP picked a kind of weak handgun).
My house is built of redwood and brick, one front door is steel and the other is a couple of inches of solid mahogany. Since even a 9mm will have no problem penetrating either, and I have no idea how many rounds they’re carrying, I still think the best defensive posture in this situation is to be out of range of the gun. I don’t have any ground that is necessary to hold, so I’d think a guerrilla approach would be the best.
Even if they do meet me on the road on my way out of the neighborhood (I have literally hundreds out of mine, five that lead directly to the freeway in less than two minutes: this is not likely), I can’t imagine a worse shot they could take than a closing shot while driving. If they’re pursuing me, and keeping within range of their weapon, they’re not going to have much time to shoot, they’re going to be occupied by driving.
I’ve been shot at (not trying to hit me personally, just general disregard for people in my direction), and had a shotgun waved in my face. I’ve also shot many things. If I have a choice of being in a gunfight or not being in a gunfight, I’m going to choose “not”.
Against one guy with anything man-portable short of an RPG, a brick wall like that will provide excellent protection. A .50 BMG rifle would shoot through it with ease, but in that case it stii provides concealment. How does he know where to shoot? .30-06 class rifles with the proper ammo would also penetrate, but with the same targeting issue. A SAW or similar weapon will chew up a wall like that in pretty short order, but that posits a ridiculously well armed psycho. I’m not one for relying entirely on passive defenses, but for the OP as written, Dibble’s house is likely to frustrate attack. Now, if the psycho fills a couple bottles with gasoline and decides to add fire to the mix, things change. Even brick homes are vulnerable to fire. Tile roof? Break the glass between the bars on one of the windows and introduce your flammable agent that way.
Dibble’s house is not an impregnable fortress, but it will hold off one poorly armed and not very clever or determined psycho long enough for security to deal with him.
I don’t understand all of the people talking about their own firearms. A gun is a lousy defense against another gun. A gun might enable you to kill the dude, but it isn’t going to do much of anything to prevent him from killing you, too. My goal is to stay alive.
I also don’t understand all of the people saying they’d leave their house. A brick wall is a good defense against a gun. At the start of the scenario, I’m on the other side of a brick wall from the attacker. Why would I want to put myself on the same side?
I would start by calling the police. Then, I would pile furniture against the door. Then I would make sure that one of my stout oak hiking sticks was close at hand, and duct-tape a bunch of textbooks to my torso. And no, I don’t expect that a thousand pages of Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler would necessarily stop a bullet, but they will absorb a lot of its energy, making it a lot less likely that a lucky shot would be lethal. And they’d also be valuable if the invader had some more practical weapon like a knife.
I’m not so worried about anyone shooting through the house from outside, but getting inside and shooting me through a wall either on purpose or by accident. If you’re hiding in a closet ready to shoot him, there’s no guarantee he won’t just spray the closet before you know he’s close. If he’s in my house and the TV makes a noise and he turns around and shoots the TV, my bedroom is on the other side of the wall. If I were hiding there, I could be dead from pure dumb luck. Once someone has a gun out and their finger on the trigger inside your house, all bets are off.
This is for most houses anyway. MrDibble does seem to have a decent little fortress going on.
Do you have windows? That’s why I would leave, because there’s no foolproof way to keep him out of my home. I timed it and, walking casually, it takes 12 seconds to go from sitting in my living room to my Jeep in the garage. When I pull out, I have a lot of roads and different directions I can take. I should be able to go from my house to impossible to find in less than a minute. It would be faster to leave than go around locking doors and windows, getting my gun ready and finding a good place to hide.
I understand staying for some people who live miles away from anything and who are guaranteed to run into the guy as they leave. They don’t have much choice.
A semi-automatic can fire bullets as fast as someone can pull the trigger, IIRC. So presumably in a couple of minutes he could riddle your house with >100 bullets. And how exactly do you get to fire back quickly, unless you’ve taken up a position near the windows that he’s shooting out first?
I don’t know your neighborhood, obviously. But I’d think that in most neighborhoods, in 10 minutes you and your loved ones could be on a completely different street on foot. You don’t have to be well hidden; the objective is to stay safe until the cops show up and apprehend the nutjob. If it takes 15 minutes for the cops to get there, and it takes the nutjob 5 minutes to figure out that nobody’s home, ISTM that being somewhere else is the best bet, even if you don’t have my woods handy.
My house used to provide a similar level of protection (until recently the windows were of a style that would take a fire ax to get through, at least). If I was a psycho and past caring if I entered silently, and the house was being defended: I’d blast the locks on all five doors from a few feet away (enjoying the defense of the walls while I did it), then enter through one of them. Even the steel door will deform enough through being shot to disable the lock.
Contrast that to the protection afforded by being several miles away. The pistol cannot physically reach me, even a .50 BMG isn’t likely to be able to touch me. Sure, the house it good, but distance is more effective, and you can almost always get more of it.
He could if he has that much ammo loaded into extra magazines. 6 full standard magazines for the Glock would give him 114 shots. If he is working the trigger like you say, he should run through that pretty quickly. Seems to me that if Bricker just hangs tight, Mr. Psycho should exhaust his ammo in just a couple minutes, allowing for his inexpert magazine changes and such. He’s a psycho, not a psychic, so he has no idea what part of the house to target. Bricker has forewarning and is a generally pretty smart man. I would expect he has moved his people to the most secure part of the house…perhaps the basement. So, Mr Psycho turns his ammo into noise and broken glass. Then the cops arrive and kill him.
Not sure what’s handgun-specific about it. If we assume each bullet takes a linear path through the house, and it doesn’t matter where along its path a bullet intersects a person, it’s the same problem as taking 200 skewers of sufficient length and sticking them through the house.
Say we’ve got a 2000 square foot house, 40x25 x 2 stories. Start off with 38 skewers 6 inches above floor level on the ground floor, 8 inches apart, then another 38 skewers in the equivalent plane on the second floor, and chances are pretty damned good of someone getting skewered, and I still have 124 skewers left.
Actually, not really. Especially given your stated assumption that the nutjob is going to try to break into your house and kill you, it’s gonna take him several minutes to break in and ascertain that you’re not there. If you’re on the next street while he does this, he should still be going through your house when the cops show up.
Maybe there are problems with being on foot that are clear only if your family isn’t good on their feet, or if your neighborhood has high fences across back yards that render the next street over inaccessible, or maybe there’s no vegetation whatsoever, so the lines of sight are so good that his chances of seeing you on the next street over are uncomfortably good. But it’s hard to see these problems unless you’ve specified them.
I’m a big fan of being on foot, because from the POV of someone traveling on streets, I can disappear, and reappear in unpredictable places.
Well, I’m in a second-floor apartment, so my windows are basically inaccessible without a ladder. But even in a conventional multi-story house with first-floor windows, going in through a window is likely to require at least some climbing, and is likely to make some noticeable sound before he gets through. If he’s got both hands climbing, then he doesn’t have a hand on his gun, and I can clobber him pretty effectively with my walking stick.
You obviously didn’t read or understand the OP. It specifies a phone call giving 10 minutes warning and that the psycho has Glock. Bricker is told these things, he doesn’t predict them. Please argue the same scenario as everyone else.