Crossbow
Pellet gun
A large array of cooking utensils like knives and BBQ forks
A shovel. Yes, really - the last guy who tried to actually break in found out my spouse is quite wicked with a garden shovel. As the cops said when they showed up to arrest his dazed ass, you’re damn lucky he didn’t use the crossbow on you like the guy who tried to steal his truck.
Break a window and use the broken glass? Hell if I know.
Seriously, I’d probably just grab my cellphone, climb out my bedroom window, and then crawl across the roof to jump down to the back porch, so I could high-tail it to my next door neighbor’s and call 911.
Either that or grab the heaviest object within reach, and run screaming at him in a desparate bonzai charge, hoping to momentarily distract him by acting like a fucking lunatic.
Agreed; and that things don’t happen like they do in movies; it’s scarier and also slower.
However, I think one’s attitude (and training) will guide responses. I decided a long time ago that “victim” wasn’t going to be in my future and received a lot of training in self-defense (and none of that wussy crap).
The most recent event involved someone actually attempting to break into my house at 2 am, who did not go away when I turned on the back porch light and yelled at him in my scariest voice. I called the police on a cordless phone using my left hand, and held my .38 in my right. (And I was reminding myself what a judge friend said…he has to be all the way in the house…ALL THE WAY IN THE HOUSE.)
I know some people who would fall apart and/or be thoroughly useless in that kind of situation, including a roommate who asked me once, “Couldn’t you just shoot the bad guy in the leg?” after I came home from the gun range. :smack:
I don’t have canned corn,but there are other canned vegetables.
Knitting needles/powerchair/hatchet under a table…
Usta train horses,so I know the “Never take a step back” and have a very stern boss mare glare.
As have I. It’s one thing if someone is trying to break in while you’re awake and alert, but quite another when you’re dead asleep. If I see you coming, I’ve got a fair chance of ruining your day. If I have to wake up and get oriented to what’s happening against an armed and alert assailant, then not so much.
I’d be out the bedroom window (first floor) with my cell phone. Police station is one block away. If cornered, I’d go all Sipsey on em with a cast-iron pan. (I presume you’ve read or seen Fried Green Tomatoes.)
I play a mean game of possum!
My father’s standard self-defense load was alternating rounds of buckshot and deer slugs. He always said if he couldn’t bring down an intruder by the third shot, he didn’t deserve to live anyway.
I carry a Mercator pocket knife with a 3 1/2 inch Solingen blade in my right front pants pocket pretty much all the time. I would take that aggressor’s garlic away from him and mince it so fast his head would spin.
In old English novels, men always seem to go for the fireplace poker when they think there’s a burglar about. I have one of those! I imagine that would hurt quite a bit coming upside a skull.
My six-year-old daughter is going through another “Why? Why? Why?” phase. That should either annoy the hell out of him and get him to leave or he’ll take her out first. A win-win for this annoyed parent.
Next best would be to send him to my Texan BIL’s place. He’s loaded for bear and could hold off small armies with his arsenal.
Actual weapons? Would a meat cleaver count? I’m not trained on anything that moves but as long as he plays “steak” he’s dead meat.
I have all the usual manner of chaos to rain down on an intruder. I also have the ability to hide or escape depending on where I am in the house. I would prefer the police deal with it as the cost involved would come out of my vacation fund for a number of years.
A Doberman and a scary husband who is anxious for an excuse to use his new Glock.
I’ve got two young kids and a wife and no weapons. I’m going down.
Specifically, I’m charging my wife with getting the kids out of the house by any means necessary, and then calling the police as soon as she is somewhat safe (maybe standing on a neighbor’s porch screaming for help: we have good neighbors).
Meanwhile, I’m hoping like goddamn that my intruder is superstitious and/or gullible, because while I don’t have any weapons, I give great curses and can talk a good game. I’d offer to take him in the morning to a safety deposit box, where we have our jewelry. I’d talk about the stupidity of not having better locks, or other robberies, or whatever I thought they wanted to talk about. In extremis, I’d gesture and describe the cells in his body already planted there that would bloom into a tumor unless I removed the curse. In total extremis (say, if I thought my wife needed another few seconds to get out of the house, I’d attack with any useless object at hand, figuring that I’d get shot/stabbed/whatever but that I might buy a few more seconds.
My goal of course would be to delay, delay, delay, until the police could show up. I figure that anyone breaking into my house intending to harm me has a lot more experience with violence than I do; my only hope of winning is to change the encounter to my terms, figuring that I probably have a lot more experience bullshitting than they do.
nothing quiets down an intruder intent on doing you harm quite as well as a sucking chest wound.
Marmite spray?
There is a God…
If anyone is able to enter my home, they have gotten through locked Hayes, locked does and the big dogs. At that point I have no choice but to consider them hostile. Both my wife and I would be armed and the intruder would be looking down the barrel of a 12ga shotgun loaded with buckshot or a 9mm loaded with howllow points. Either way, it’s going to end badly for someone.
With that said, I truly how that this is never a situation that I have to deal with. I never want to cause harm to another person, but I won’t hesitate to do so if I our my family are in danger. If you’ve gotten past the fence, the door and the dogs you are there to hurt me, so my response will be equal. Leave me be and I’ll leave you be.
So the same spouse who is disabled to the point where he couldn’t stand up after falling on a grill and ended up with his pants burned off and “rebew” branded into his ass is also an ace home invasion defender with a shovel and a crossbow? And he, what, knocked the guy out with the shovel?
The thief now has “gniK fruT” permanently embossed on his forehead.
I have lots of goodies…
A supremely sharpened, well balanced Wusthof chef’s knife.
A very dull, but very hard machete.
A rattan staff.
A spool of safety wire, which would make an excellent garrote.
A good slingshot and a bag of my son’s marbles.
Shotguns and various caliber pistols and rifles would have to do it for me.