To keep your loved ones safe, you need to adopt flexible home defense tactics that can meet a wide range of threats. This goes far beyond buying a home defense gun, running a mag through, and then leaving it in your closet untouched for months on end. It may start with finding the gear you need to protect your home at Pennsylvania’s Largest Gun Show, but it continues when you get home as you plan, prepare, and practice to act decisively to end a threat. Family safety in a home defense situation is a family endeavor.
The Difference Between Home and Self-Defense
Home defense tactics encompass many of the same tactics as self-defense but with one key addition: a static location. This location, however, also includes a large portion of the things you value most, including material possessions, the structure itself, and, most importantly, your loved ones, including a partner, your kids, and your pets. That exponentially increases the potential targets for an aggressor while also setting certain limitations on your defensive tactics.
But I Don’t Care About Limits When Defending My Home
Yes, you do. Bravado aside, the house and possessions, which have immense monetary and sentimental value, are a limiting factor to one degree or another. The dimensions and layout of the house limit your movement. The state of repair or cleanliness limits your stealth. That big, overstuffed recliner? It limits your sightlines.
The biggest limits, however, are your loved ones. Their location in relation to the threat. Their ability to defend themselves or escape. Their tactical training. All these factors will affect the home defense tactics you can use to successfully and safely use your home defense gun to protect property and lives.
The Three P’s of Effective Home Defense Tactics
Effective home defense tactics all focus on the three P’s. By planning out your strategy, preparing for the worst, and practicing both your tactics and shooting with your home defense gun, you’re taking the necessary steps to increase your family’s chances of surviving robberies, home invasions, and other violent scenarios.
Plan
Know Your Home – Start by evaluating the spaces in and around your home. Identify sightlines, areas of easy access, defensible locations, and easy escape routes. You want to account for any area that could be tactically advantageous to you or an attacker. Take note of anything that may direct or inhibit movement, general ranges, and available lighting.
Windows, doorways, and large pieces of furniture can all be considerations when planning your home defense. Outside, sheds, yard equipment, fencing, and landscaping may prevent either challenges or opportunities. Remember that ambient lighting and sightlines can create cover in certain situations and leave you over-exposed in others, so get to know your property at different times of day and seasons of the year.
Defensive Strategies – Now, you can begin formulating your home defense tactics. Ideally, you want to confront any attacker in an area where you have more coverage and freedom of movement than they do. This lets you bring more accurate and intensive firepower to bear while robbing them of the chance to return fire accurately or advance on your position.
Deny Access – In all likelihood, there will be family members who will need to seek protection rather than create it. Identify areas that can be secured in an emergency to keep an attacker at bay. Your home defense tactics should also include planning escape routes for spouses or children to take if needed. Denying an assailant access to vulnerable loved ones or potential hostages is an important aspect of planning whether or not someone with a home defense handgun is present.
Saferooms, cellars, and attics can all be great places to hide and barricade to deny an attacker access, but they don’t offer many escape options, and not all properties have them. Bathrooms, especially on the ground floor, can be locked and may have a window smaller family members can escape through to run to a neighbor’s house. Look for opportunities to both make hiding places more secure and safe as well as ensure escape routes can be secured against entry while providing an efficient route to safety when needed.
Establish Roles – Determine who in the household has a responsibility to defend the home, who is in charge of getting vulnerable members of the house–children, elderly parents (who aren’t capable of defending themselves), or pets–to safety, and who needs to get safe and stay out of the way. A household where everyone is old enough and sufficiently trained to grab their own home defense gun and respond to a threat is incredibly rare and often relegated to Hollywood blockbusters.
Prepare
Gear-Up – If you don’t have one already, start looking for a dedicated home defense gun. This can also be your concealed carry pistol, but it doesn’t have to be. Home defense tactics don’t face many of the same limiting factors, allowing you to choose a rifle, carbine, or shotgun if it better suits your property’s defensive needs. Handguns may still be a good choice for apartments, but larger homes or rural properties may need the extended range of a long gun.
Along with firearms, you’ll also want to pick up emergency essentials that your home defense tactics may call for. Escape lappers can help in the case of an attack or fire that cuts off access to the ground floor of a home, and first aid kits are useful anytime an accident or injury occurs. At your local gun show, you can also find bullet-proof clothing and accessories, pepper spray, rations, tools, and more to fill out your SHTF or tactical go-bag.
Secure Your Property – Effective security is the first step to effective defense. Take the opportunity to secure your home by replacing old or broken locks, adding security screens to windows and doors, and installing security cameras. Additional lighting can also help you identify and engage threats more easily. Finally, don’t forget to include a way to contact the authorities as part of your home security plan, whether as part of an alarm system or a stand-alone emergency phone.
Take on Training – Look for training opportunities to help family members fulfill their roles. This can be indoor tactical training to sharpen your skills with your home defense gun, but there are plenty of other useful classes for the whole family. To start with, the whole family (where age and aptitude appropriate) should get first aid and CPR training from a reputable certifying body like the American Red Cross. You can also consider adult and child self-defense classes that could provide some basic protection skills for use in and out of the home.
Practice
Household Defensive Drills – You perform how you train. Take the time to set up home defense tactics drills for members of your household individually and as a family unit. This repetition helps build good habits and eliminate bad ones while giving you the opportunity to identify parts of your plan that aren’t working.
Range Time – Take the time to get your home defense gun sighted in and practice with it regularly. Work on your static marksmanship, but you should also work on moving with your weapon if your range allows it. Set up tactical drills that can improve your skills working with your weapon.
Evaluate and Evolve – Home defense tactic planning is an active and ongoing process. Stay sharp and watch for areas you need to revisit, fine-tune, or change your strategy entirely as your house or household changes.
Get Your Home Defense Gun and Accessories at Your Local Gun Show
Your local gun show is the perfect place to find the right home defense gun for your property. You’ll also have an unsurpassed selection of firearms accessories, tactical gear, and other equipment to make the most of your home defense tactics. Check our gun show calendar because there’s always a local event coming to a town near you. Take the first step toward protecting your home. Order your tickets online to an Eagle Shows Gun Show today.
