You’re parsing that wrong Kalhoun.
When Lib said
He was talking about Phlosphr.
i.e. If the guys with guns outside had have tried to get inside then the threat of force from Phlosphr is the fact that he has a loaded gun.
Got it. Thanks and sorry.
I live in the country. Mostly when I hear gunshots it’s hunters or skeet shooters. Target shooters often shoot rapidly in succession. As long as it doesn’t sound like it’s on my property, I ignore it and make sure the dogs are all in. If it’s too close, I’ll put my horses up in the barn, too.
StG
Yeah - what they said.
You guys have all been great, I needed to bounce these things off all of you. Thanks again.
And Og Damn it, this better not happen again!
Phlosphr, I mean this kindly and I hope you take it that way – if you own a shotgun for “protection” and are not sure if you reacted properly to a perceived threat, you really need to take a self-defense course for properly handling a weapon. You suggest that you were reacting out of fear. Proper training will allow you to react with confidence.
I’m glad no one was hurt! Good luck.
Shoot first next time!
Wait… no, that’s not right. Throw open the door and pump a couple rounds into the dirt just to get their attention, then shout something macho (then bandage your foot and call an ambulance) 
I have no idea who you are nor what your life has been, so I certainly wouldn’t judge your abilities. The thought that you put into the reaction seems to me a pretty good indication that you are in control of yourself and etc. You didn’t go charging out of the house, you didn’t hide behind the couch shivering in terror, based on the OP I can’t imagine what you could have/should have done differently. Way too much personal defense training has taught me that the worst thing you can possibly do is ignore a potential threat until you know for sure (by that time, it’s too late). With children in the house, I’d be way more low-key about arming myself, maybe even with the missus that jumpy, but it’s far better to have to unload and re-secure your weapon than it is to need it when it’s not ready.
Phlosphr, Question:
You hear shots fired from outside your house (not 100 yards away as you note). The two of you immediately get down and take cover. You go to the bedroom, unlock your shotgun and load it. You take your loaded weapon back into the other room with your wife. Less than a minute later, there is loud and urgent knocking on your front door (or perhaps your doorbell is rung).
What do you do?
/just curious
My description of what I did in this less than stellar night last night was based on close to exact events. Your question can only get answered in my opinion had it happened directly to me, and I was describing it back to you. In other words I don’t know what I would have done had your situation happened. Probably: I’d have done the same thing, but went to answer the door with my gun. The situation would have called for that kind of reaction, even if it were a cop, I’d have the right to show up to my door with a gun. But like I said, I’m glad that didn’t happen last night.
Not to hijack this or anything, but I just read the phrase “get away from the windows” and thought, “drywall is as transparent to a 9 mm bullet as window glass is”. I don’t have a cite but I remember reading of an experiment showing a 9 mm went through 3 or 4 double-sided drywall walls (with many feet in between the walls). So “getting away from the windows” only keeps the BG (Bad Guy) from having a target to aim at. Walls DON’T keep you safe. And unless your house is made of brick or stone, exterior wood won’t keep you safe, either.
Similarly, a bullet will go completely through a car, unless the engine block is between you and the shooter. The Hollywood myth of a car door stopping a bullet is just that.
J.
Well, yeah…but the presumption is that the assailant doesn’t have x-ray vision and won’t know where you’re standing in the house, thereby increasing your chances of dodging the bullet, as it were.
I’ve done the same thing when I heard screams outside - called the cops and loaded the shotgun. I’m a grownup, live with a grownup, and have no children - when I realized how long it took me to load the gun that time, I decided to keep it loaded from now on. Safety on, of course.
Phlosphr–any bullet damage to your home/car?
Did you check?
I don’t really think you overreacted to load your gun, as long as you don’t do anything stupid with it, which you obviously didn’t.
Wow. I’ve never lived anywhere where gunshots were a regular occurrence, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard one that sounded close, but if I did, I can’t imagine I’d do more than peek out a window to see if I could see anything–even if I had my baby sister with me, who is the only person I feel any particular need to protect. I mean, it’s obvious that they aren’t shooting at me, right? I’ve never heard of a criminal who, having already shot (at) someone, went looking around for people in windows to shoot at. Nor have I heard of a criminal who, having shot (at) someone look for some other occupied house to burst into guns blazing. Nor can I think of any particular reason why they would.
Sure, such a thing is possible, but its poss’ible (though extremely unlikely) for someone to take a shot at me though a window or burst through my door without any warning, too. I doubt very much that the odds of such an event go up too dramatically in the minutes after hearing a gunshot. And the ods could probably multiply severalfold before they come close to the odds of tripping and hitting my head fatally on the way to getting a gun.
(Please note that this is not an anti-gun post. I don’t think there are no circumstances where a gun would be useful for home protection (say, if you heard a suspicious noise inside your house, or someone trying to get in.) And I have no objection to a responsible, well-trained person having a gun at home. I just don’t think it was likely to do much good in this situation.)
I walked around my house this morning and again when I got home. No damage. Plus, the cops pretty much spent the time walking all over the property of our neighbor.
So much for a quiet little beach community. And that truly sucks.
I live in a rural area on four acres, that is connected to about a thousand acres of power company property. I have continuously hunted this area for over thirty years. To say I know the lay of the land back there would be an understatement. I could run through the woods in the dead of night and never get smacked with a branch.
That said, one day a few years ago, I was getting ready to go to work on a night tour, walking past my 5 by 5 dining room window, when three bullets came through said window. I was about 2 steps away from catching at least one of the rounds.
The window was double paned with an airlock in between. The first round caused a small explosion of glass, and the round went into a wall. Rounds two and three went through the first pane and fell down to the bottom of the window, and sat there.
My wife started to scream ‘what the hell was that!’, and I yelled to get down on the floor and call 911.
I have a full carry permit, and I strapped a 38 onto my belt and ran out the front door, I absolutely knew exactly where the shooter and the shots were coming from. I was in full Rambo alert, adrenaline pumping like crazy.
My plan was to approach him from behind, and circling around, I did just that. Ahead of me was a teenager, with a .22 rifle, and he was still shooting…not at my house, but, straight up in the air. From behind a tree, I yelled to him to stop shooting…that I needed to talk to him for a minute…and, thank Og, he listened. I asked him to put the rifle on the ground, and he did that. I approached him with my hand on the pistol…picked up the rifle and said very calmly, that I needed him to walk towards my house with me. He meekly complied, and as he walked ahead of me, the first of 3 State Trooper cars was pulling into my driveway.
Turns out that the kid was mildly retarded, was…his words…shooting at tweety birds in the trees.
The police investigation showed that all three bullets that hit my window, came from the sky…the ‘old what goes up must come down’ syndrome. He had no clue that his rounds were hitting my house.
It seems that one of the Troopers knew this kid, and had a relationship with the kids father. He assured me that the gun was being confiscated, and the father finding out about this would eliminate any threat of this ever happening again.
Within a week, the kids father sent a crew to replace the window, and case closed.
Would I do this again? Yes, I would, and I’ll tell you why. How could I continue to live here not knowing who fired the shots? I would be living in utter fear any time I heard a random shot, expecting it to come through the house. What if I were targeted for some reason? Would you sleep well every night? Do it again?, you betcha!
In my old apartment, this sort of thing happened twice. The good thing was that there was only one large window in the living room and two in each bedroom. The two were up by the celing and impossible to reach from outside without a ladder, so both times we locked the front door and stayed away from windows. The first time we called the police - they showed up a lot later (maybe 2 hours) and checked everything out. Apparently it had been right behind our apartment in the alley, but no one was injured that they could find. The second time our neighbor confessed to it. He shot three times at a target behind in the same alley. He didn’t think that gunshots at 4 am would scare anyone in a slightly downtown setting. He also was not very smart. We found out the next morning where the shots came from.
I don’t own a gun, but if I did, I would’ve grabbed it quickly - not so much to go out and investigate but in case something came through the door. It’s a crazy world.
Brendon
What a great story, ltfire! I don’t own a gun, but if something like that happened to me, I’d sure wish I did, and hope that I’d handle it as calmly and rationally as you did. Good job!
Tell the family to get down.
Turn out all the inside lights.
Turn on all the outside lights.
Optional (Call the police if there was enough commotion to warrant their time. Definitely call the police if any foreign object entered the house.)
Check from various inconspicuous windows if there was movement outside.
My reaction is not going to be that I am a target if my first warning is that of gunfire. (Why would an invader warn me that he was coming by firing random shots?) I would expect that an actual home invasion would begin with the entering of the home. In this neighborhood (exurban subdivision surrounded by wooded ravines), gunfire is more likely to be some kid firing rounds (illegally) in their back yard than some sort of violent action and while I would expect most of the gun nuts (not to be confused with hunters or other gun owners) to still show enough intelligence to be firing at targets at the bottom of a ravine rather than across multiple house lots, I would not be excited about trying to track down the source of the noise, (in case they were stupid drunk and liable to fire toward the street), and I would not want to put a cop in danger or waste his time looking for something that he would never find. (If the gunshots continued, rather than being a single burst or salvo, I would call the cops. The longer the firing the more likely someone will get hurt–plus continuous firing can** be tracked down, unlike single bursts where the shooters go back into the house, leaving no trace of their activity.)
What would I have done? Pretty much what you did, except my shotgun stays loaded and hangs on the living room wall, so all I’d have to do is click the safety off.
I think you did well.