Humans like to have things in orderly fashion, “Tomorrow, this will happen and I need to do this about it.” And, we tend to extend that to dealing with problems and emergencies. “If I do X, then Y will happen, and Z will be the results. Of course that is often optimistic thinking. We make plans and plans get ruined. Nowhere is that truer than when dealing with a criminal attack.
We buy a defensive handgun and seek out some professional training. The instructor teaches us some of the defensive shooting skills and we do well at them. We’re good to go, right?
But, we’ve also studied up on actual attacks and find that crooks often run in groups, so we start carrying four large magazines with our pistol, only to have the pistol break in our very first criminal encounter. While the guy over there carries two guns to avoid that problem and then runs out of ammunition. Meanwhile, the guy with the 2-inch Chiefs Special solves his dilemma with three shots. If we decide that life isn’t fair or logical, we’re beginning to get the picture.
Those of us who spend time writing and teaching about home defense offer ideas about how to harden your home as a target. The only trouble is that they are just good ideas and there’s no assurance that they really meet your needs; no one knows your house better than you do. I work in a room that has two external doors, so I give thought to how I would respond to an attack from that door or the other door, meanwhile the crook shoots through the window. And it would also be my luck to plan to deal with a home invasion and end up being the victim of a carjacking.
So, if I have raised more questions than answers, I have done my job today. There are rarely simple solutions to serious, complex problems. Never quit studying. Never quit training. And never quit learning. You are responsible for your own safety, however that needs to come about.
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