My defense is to do nothing. My things are just things. My life is destined to end sooner or later anyway. I know what comes next and am prepared for it. I do not know that the person breaking into my house is ready for their life to end at my hand. It is better to die as a martyr than live as a murderer.
I have a steel door with a high-security lock; you’d need a shaped charge to get through it (they’re standard here - security doors, not shaped charges, I mean). Besides that, I have a hammer by the door, a baseball bat, several chef’s knives my wife keeps razor-sharp, and a 5-foot replica claymore, which hasn’t been sharpened, but I don’t think any invader will know that when I charge at them with it, screaming.
I also live in an apartment in a safe neighborhood in the middle of the city, with plenty of neighbors and passersby on the street at all hours, and a police station near by. My policy, in the unlikely case of a home invasion, is to call and shout for reinforcements, and then hunker down until they arrive.
Why do you assume that death would necessarily be the outcome? You might just wind up totally disabled/screwed up/messed up. Is that better or worse?
And while I respect your choice of complete and total non-violence, some of us have a different viewpoint. Screw this being a martyr stuff, not all of us were brought up Christian (assuming that’s where it comes from). Nor do I view self-defense as murder.
So… without looking too deep into this, a guy on Quora calculated that your lifetime odds in the USA of being the victim of a home invasion is about double that of your lifetime risk of being struck by lightning. Most people will suffer exactly zero home invasions in their entire lives. Compared to other dangers like house fires (how many of you have a fire extinguisher in the home?), you’re just not that likely to be a victim of this crime.
Given that having a gun in the home greatly increases your risk of attempting and completing suicide, I think I’ll gladly roll those dice. If someone breaks into my home with the intent of harming me or my loved ones… Well, shit. Sucks to be me.
I’d chuckle while the steel security door thwarts any pathetic attempts to break it.
And why would I dial the police? My perimeter alarm would already be going off if they’re at my door.
I’ll go out the back door with the family. Since HE doesn’t have a gun either, I’ll grab something heavy to hit him with if he decides to follow.
Dude! You have a perimeter alarm? Really? Seriously?
How does that even work? Deer, raccoons, turkey, dogs, etc would constantly set off any perimeter alarm I can imagine setting up around our home.
Have you considered trying to make a society where there’s less crime; thereby, making fear over what to do in case of home invasion less necessary?
They’re not trying to rob me. Someone looking for a house to rob won’t try to smash their way through a door. (Front door: solid wood, deadbolt. Back door and basement door: sliding glass doors (heavy double pane glass), both barred shut.) They’d try the doors, then go to the next house.
So the only reason someone would be smashing through my doors is that they’re out to kill me or my family. But who the fuck would want to do that? AFAICT, there’s nobody out there who’s particularly upset with me.
I’m pushing 65. In those 65 years, nobody has EVER tried to break into my residence while I’ve been there. The possibility of an incident such as you describe happening to me anytime soon is such a low-probability event that it’s not worth preparing for.
So having a gun exists more as a risk factor than a means of protection. When he was younger, the Firebug might’ve shot himself with it by accident. Now that he’s in his pre-teen years, I wouldn’t want a gun around over the next several years in case he ever considers suicide. If a gun is in the house, a brief moment of despair can easily turn into suicide by gun. Or maybe in a moment of anger, he’d grab it and shoot someone else. I would regard these as real risks if I owned a gun; I regard the risk of a psycho killer breaking into my house as vanishingly small.
Also, why wouldn’t my phone work? Reception is great here.
Of all the responses, this in a way makes the most sense. Have an alarm system with a “panic button” that not only makes alot of noise but also calls police.
As much as I like the idea of a gun, I agree most people wouldnt be ready to use one effectively. Same way with a baseball bat, knife, or other weapon. If your not ready to actually use it to the extent you would kill someone it really isnt helpful.
Not my kid, thank the Lord. If that had happened, I wouldn’t be posting: I’d be incoherent.
But another kid, one who had gone to my son’s elementary school and had been in his middle school until a few weeks ago. His parents divorced, and whether he was upset about that or something else, he was able to put his hands on a gun. Shot himself in the head. Dead. Twelve years old.
This happened yesterday. I found out about it just now. Horrible.
All too real, goddamnit. 
:mad:
My wife and I own a gun right now. We plan to have kids. Once we have kids, we’re gonna have to figure out whether there’s a way to own guns safely such that the chance of one of the kids being hurt or killed by the gun is less than their chance of being killed by an intruder (i.e. is a top-notch gun safe enough for this?), or whether this isn’t possible and we’re better off getting rid of them. Or, as a third option, if it’s possible, locking them up somewhere far away from home – which we’ll consider, since home defense is not really a significant reason why we own a gun.
I would have one of theseif I had children about.
'Round here, you can get shot for saying something like that…
My father, when he was younger, enjoyed hunting. He had one, maybe two long guns (I’m not positive, but I know that he hunted both deer and gamebirds, and I don’t know that he used the same gun for both).
When I was born, he stored the gun(s) in my grandmother’s basement, as he didn’t want any guns in the house with small children. The gun(s) stayed there until my younger sister was about 10; at that point, he retrieved them, had them cleaned, and started hunting again (though he wasn’t a particularly avid hunter).
About fifteen years later, my sister (who was still living with my parents) had a baby. The guns went away again – by that point, my grandmother had passed away, so he stored the guns at a friend’s house for a few years, then sold them.
I can say, as a non gun owner, who has gone through exactly what the OP describes I am INCREDIBLY grateful I don’t own a gun.
In 2010 I was woken by an intruder in my house (actually the flashlight and footsteps outside my bedroom door), I had enough time to go from “oh that’s just my imagination” to “oh yeah there is actually a burglar in my house”, then enough time to consider what to do before he opened my bedroom door. If I had a gun he would absolutely walked into a bullet. As it was it was a kid and his buddies (I assume meth heads based on their conversation) they claimed to have a gun, made sit on my couch, did very lame job of tying me up and stole all my shit. I think they ever expected to the place to be occupied as my car wasn’t in driveway that night.
It was a pretty terrifying experience, but actually not in the top three worst things to happen to me that year. 2010 was a shitty year for me (awful break up and dog dying). The only lasting bad affect is it much harder to tell myself a noise in the night is NOT a burglar.
If I HAD shot the kid (which would very likely have happened if I had a gun, given the circumstances) then I’d have killed someone over my laptop and Nintendo Wii, I would have got away with it legally but not in any other sense. There is no way it wouldn’t hang over me and f*ck me up far far more than that time I was the victim of a home invasion of robbery. Yeah they could have done something worse than steal my shit, but statistically that was the most likely outcome. The most likely outcome if I had a gun would have been I killed someone.
You’re a better man than I.
I do hope that I would have made them wait while the police arrived. I’d have my laptop and the kids would be in jail.
Let us consider the guy who mugged my Wife. “I have a gun and I’m going to kill you.” Had I been there with a gun, I would have killed him. Immediate threat to life.
A human life isn’t worth your laptop, but is it worth another life? Is it worth two lives?
I am not being a smart ass, I am asking a philosophical question.
I’m anti-gun in the sense that I don’t want one in my home and that I want there to be more legal restrictions on gun ownership than currently.
But in the situation the OP describes, of course I’d want to have a gun. Yes, I’d also try to evade or barricade, but in the event that didn’t work, a gun would be useful.
The reason that I can believe those two seemingly contradictory things is that it’s a silly question. The reason I don’t want a gun is all the other times that a gun would be a liability. Like if I failed to secure it properly and my kids found it. Like if I or a family member became suicidally depressed. Like if I became enraged and used it to hurt someone who was not a threat to me. Like if I misjudge a split-second situation and accidentally think that I’m defending my life against someone innocent.
We all like to think that we’re rational and in control of ourselves and would never be the sort of person who would do those things. But we’re not. We’re imperfect and forgetful and sometimes prey to neurotransmitters that we can’t control or reason with.
The data is very clear that owning a gun doesn’t make you and your loved ones safer. Maybe you gun owners are the ones who will buck the trend, but statistically, most of you who believe that are wrong, and I have little confidence that I would be an outlier either.
Speaking from experience I can say the chances of that situation ending peacefully we’re very slim indeed if I had a gun. There is not a lot of rational consideration going at 3am when a random guy appears at your bedroom door.
My point is, that yes there is chance that encounter ended up with me having my throat slit, but it’s unlikely the majority of home invasion burglaries end how that one did. Legally we say killing someone in that situation is ok. Morally and psychologically I say it’s not.