Canadians are allowed to own guns too, you know 
Granted, as my father keeps his locked away these days, I don’t know that they’d be easily accessible in a short amount of time. He’d still have his bow and arrows though.
Sure we are. But I don’t know anyone who has one…
Two cowering corgis. Take anything you want, but hurt my dogs and the base of a fake Tiffany lamp will meet your skull. Hello, skull!
A similar scenario happened to one of my landlord’s tenants this week - a wanted fugitive had listed their address as his home or some such (I’m not clear on all the details), along with his ID matching that address, when he was last picked up off the street. When he made a jailbreak that was the first place they came looking, breaking into the house at 7:30 in the morning with guns drawn.
Well, obviously they were as much victims of a criminal as anyone else the bad guy had wronged, victims of a sort of identity-theft, and the marshalls apologized for the misunderstanding and compensated the landlord for the cost of replacing the door. We expect the tenants will stop quivering in a few days. But these things can and do happen even to upstanding citizens.
As I pointed out, my family has people with a diagnosed mental illness that frequently leads to self-harm, even to the point of death. I fail to see how keeping firearms in close proximity to the potentially and actually suicidal is a benefit as in that particular case I believe the firearm probably is more likely to be used on a family member (self-inflicted) than on an intruder. We do try to get these people to appropriate care when they get that bad, of course. As I also pointed out, we don’t always succeed. While we can’t make the world completely safe for them, I don’t see much use in bringing yet another lethal method of self-destruction into their environment.
There’s no reason I can’t take my crossbow out to the local shooting range, and in fact, when I’ve been there there are always several folks with bow (usually compound hunting, but no exclusively) shooting alongside the folks with firearms. As modern bows can have similar range and lethality as many firearms that really is an appropriate place to use them.
It’s a pain in the butt, though, because the law in my area requires that a crossbow be disassembled for transport purposes. In other words, it’s illegal for me to drive around with an intact crossbow in the trunk of my car.
Likewise, we also clean and maintain our crossbow, just like we would a firearm, because it would be really awful to need it and have it jam or misfire or some important component snap.
That depends on where you live - if your address ends in “Bhopal, India” you might actually decide to opt for the hazmat suit. I would be surprised if we didn’t have a few Dopers downwind of chemical plants, and in such locations possession of a hazmat suit or equipment might be only slightly paranoid.
The Watchtower and Awake!,Amway pamphlets.
If that doesn’t work, .40 Glock.
So, what, are you saying that you don’t have a hazmat suit or a hovercraft? :dubious:
Those flashlights are definitely pretty darned bright. A couple of the employees at a gun store I frequent occasionally use them in pranks on each other. Not pranks of an especially sophisticated nature, to be sure – more along the lines of “Hey, can you come and look at this?” “Sure man, what’s u–OW MY EYES!” Even though it’s just a brief flash in a brightly lit retail store, it usually takes a minute or two for their eyes to fully readjust. I need to get me one of those. 
MacTech,or was it ducati? - You are absolutely right about the flashlight - a great tip, thank you. This thread has delivered for me. I had heard that somewhere before and forgot. Next thing on my to-get list.
Jodi - You don’t need a rationale to won a hovercraft other than it’s awesome.
You probably have the best, or at least safest plan of all. Just take a cellphone with you to call for police. You can stay until they show up. 
You don’t actually need to be on a team to buy a golf club or a baseball bat. I don’t even remember how I acquired mine.
Its not really weapons that stop an intruder, its the will to use them and not second guess yourself about little stuff like cops and trials and juries and what not.
The average thug has changed tactics from creeping about in the night to violent home invasions which means that you would pretty much have to carry a weapon all the time. While the cops in canada may not charge you with manslaughter, but your reaction time may mean that you did not have a weapon properly secured in the manner that is usually described, so your dammed if you give in and take your chances with thug, or dammed if you dont and take matters into your own hands.
Now , for my money what I would do
Is set up the best stereo system possible, this would more be a computer set up than a stand alone stereo system of old. So puter to amp to speakers in every room in the house, big ones. Add strobes that would probably have to be hacked to get the required errr strobe effect, again in every single room of the house, placement will vary do to local landscape.
Will be hooked up to main power supply, so that the program will cut every light in the house except for the aforementioned units and the puter will dial out 911.
Doors and windows will be hardened, so that possible malefactors will create enough noise to attract attention.
Setting up the panic buttons and the disarm routine will probably be tricky but I dont envision sleepless nights worrying about it.
I just need to figure out the right sine wave for the audio to make em shit themselves.
Declan
A .40 cal “howdy.”
So, how do you keep your high-powered incontinence ray from resulting in the unintentional, erm, evacuation of everybody in the building (or worse, neighborhood!), not just the intruder? And how do you bring yourself to explain the aftermath to the police when they finally show up? 
Id actually have to ask a local cop about that to be honest. Im sure I would get the call 911 let us deal with it type thing and a really weird look from the cop, but I dont have that information for you.
I dont think me saying , my bad, would go over well.
Declan
And I would agree. However, the OP didn’t ask what we have personally picked to defend our homes with. He asked, “What are the met with?”
And as I stated earlier, my neighborhood isn’t the sort of place where “hot burglaries” take place, and as such I don’t keep a loaded firearm in my home. That doesn’t mean any burglaries take place, and my firearms are pretty useless without me, but potentially valuable to the burglar. So they stay unloaded and locked up in a gun safe that’s secured to the floor with anchors driven into concrete.
If my neighborhood were to change, I would have no problem keeping a loaded firearm close to hand, probably my 1911.
ARMA, for starters, and SCA as well. Gotta be careful there. As a friend of mine once said, upon seeing on group of SCA-types going at it, “What a buncha poncey gits!” The group I hung with for a bit in Dallas was pretty competent, and I picked up enough knowledge to be a threat to someone, yes.
I can’t speak to anyone’s claimed “Mastery” of Renaissance or Medieval weaponry, but I’ve always been of the school of thought that people are dangerous, not weapons (barring defect in design or construction, of course).
Therefore, any weapon that a person is trained in and mentally prepared to use, and have ready-to-hand during crunch-time, is by definitiona practical weapon.
In my circumstances, my firearms are impractical weapons for self/home defense precisely because they are unloaded and locked in a gun safe. I would not want to have to be awakened in the middle of the night, try to open my gun safe and load a firearm.
But my edged weapons are hanging on my bedroom wall on hooks.
Security systems and arrangements are classified and Need-To-Know.
They are not discussed.
My brain & her brain and that is the scary one…
First ( Yes, first.) armed intruder happened in Tulsa in about 1960. He broke right through the front door while the family was eating dinner. Dad instantly got in front of him shielding the family and motioned me to go for the guns. We got out of it with no shots fired but it was close.
Also while out as a teen in the woods, had crazy folks show up waving a weapon …
We have all manner of weapons as we live out at 40th & Plum. We practice and have made as many of the decisions before hand as possible.
No kids here any more and that was never a problem anyway, no late coming back drunk or any other way people, no relative stupid enough to come unannounced anytime day or night, drunk or sober, etc…
Most danger comes after you have been scouted, so we shoot guns a lot on the place, I ride the mower armed so the passerbys see the crazy gun nut, and in the country, no one gets excited to be met at the door or on the drive by a person carrying a weapon. It is called common sense out here. Calling 911 is totally useless for getting an armed responder anytime soon. Can get the local fire & EMT guys but they usually don’t come armed… And why should my neighbor defend me, I can do dat and it is not really his job, needs to protect his family first.
Also all the people who ever flew with me liked that I had thought about, practiced for and was constantly aware of and looking for the very rare chance that something would get sideways. After enough years, that did occasionally happen and if I had waited until it went sideways before deciding what to do and not practiced it so I could do it well and quickly, well, you get my point…
In my life (military does not count for this thread) stuff does seem to happen so, I plan on making taking me or mine or our stuff away really really hard.
I do not subscribe to the notion that human life is all that precious and that folks should not pay with death for bad decisions along the lines of this thread.
Legos.
Legos all over the floor. 
Lego: the modern man’s caltrops.
I’ve got a couple of swords but the house is too small to effectively wield them, so I’d be making an exit sharpish. Besides, the hilts are in poor condition and I’d probably lose my fingers.