How Do I Defend My Home From a Violent Attack?

In order to understand what skill sets are required to survive, we must understand the elements of the fundamental types of attack. One, in your home, or two, away from home. As we go through these two fundamental attack types, it will become apparent that although not easy, the attack in your home is a less difficult problem than the away from home attack because you have the home field advantage. You can control the environment in the home attack, where you can't if you are attacked away from home.

In today's feature, we are going to look at the nature of violent attacks within your home and discuss some of the preparations and skill sets you will need to meet and defeat this threat. Next month, we will look at the nature of violent attacks outside your home.

For the purpose of this article, the operative definition of home invasion is, when one or more criminals force their way into a domicile knowing that one or more residents is at home. Home invasions differ from burglary in this way. Your typical burglar looks for a target where the residents are away from the home. They want to avoid the entanglements that the need to secure the residents and the possibility that someone will testify against them present. On the other hand, home invaders want the residents at home. You can figure, if they want you at home, they have plans for you, and those plans are not going to be pleasant. It is because the need to secure the residents and keep them from escaping or fighting back that home invasions are frequently perpetrated by a group of three to six, and sometimes more, heavily armed thugs. Attendant crimes like rape, sexual assault, battery, murder, and arson are frequently committed by these heavily armed individuals.

This is a frightening and heinous crime that no one should be forced to face.

You are probably saying, "Yeah, but that's not going to happen to me." I would be much better off to spend my resources defending against a more likely tragedy like a home fire! I'm sure many of my readers, particularly the ones with children in the home, do home fire drills. I doubt that many of you have a plan to stop a home invasion and even fewer have a drill to perfect that plan because after all, "Home invasions don't happen that often." Well, I hate to rain on your parade but according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report and Simply Insurance Council, there are 1.65 MILLION home invasions in this country every year and about 358,500 home fires per year. That's right, there are four and half times more violent home invasions in the U.S. than home fires. It is stunning to consider that you are 450% more likely to experience a home invasion than the threat most people defend against.

When dealing with a home invasion defense program, it is best to break it into multiple bite size parts. In the initial program, we break the plan into the 6 D's.

      1. Detect the threat in advance.

      2. Deter: make them go seek out an easier target.

      3. Deny access. Either stop them from breaking in or slow them down enough to give you more time to react.

      4. Defend your safe spot or your "Alamo".

      5. Deploy your weapons, whatever they may be; however, if by deploying your weapons you can get the attackers to break off their attack and leave without using force, that is ALWAYS a win!

      6. Defeat If all else fails, deploy your weapons platform, using potentially *lethal force.

*NOTE: our intent in any situation is ALWAYS to stop the attack, not to kill.

To do anything else, is to leave the safety and wellbeing of yourself and your loved ones in the hands of violent criminals.

This blog is a step by step plan to avoid, deter, or defeat a home invasion. For more information on this, see our blog, the 6 D's of Home Defense that is coming in the next few weeks.