Security in Your Home, Part 6: Training

In the worst case scenario, the intruder has made it through all of your layers. He has decided your well-lit house is worth entering. He has bypassed your locks and ignored your alarm. Your dog is incapacitated, and he has entered your safe-room before the police have had a chance to arrive. Here, you are left to rely on your training. Consider getting a gun and gun training. There is no more effective method of self defense than a gun in trained hands. Don’t get the gun without getting training. The NRA offers courses all around the country for a generally reasonable fee. Don’t treat the gun as a magic talisman to ward off evil. If you are planning to have a gun for self defense, you must be willing to use the gun. It won’t scare off intruders if you are not willing to use it. If a gun in impractical, for whatever reason, consider unarmed self defense training. Your training should include the legal aspect of using force-particularly lethal force-if the necessity arises. No matter your method of training, never give up! If you can disrupt the script in the intruder’s head, you stand a much better chance of surviving unscathed. Remember, your home provides the privacy necessary to effectively transform it into a “secondary crime scene” at the whim of a criminal. Don’t let it happen to you.