Security at Home IV: Defending my Castle, Five Points
By Cecilio Andrade
Many share Johnny Depp’s phrase “My home is wherever I am with my own, a quiet place, a non-violent place.” But … can we assure that 100%, in the violent world that we live in, will it always be like this? If you think so, stop reading the present text at this time, and the previous ones, and those that follow, they are not for you.
How many weapons handling courses do you attend? If you do it in more or less habitual way congratulations, you are a statistical anomaly. And now another question, do these courses fit into what home defense involves with our loved ones within? No doubt they are academically, although from experience I can assure you that rarely with the real fluency that is sought in SWAT training before entrenched terrorists or drug smugglers. Children and wives/husbands are not mere unknown “hostages” if we are the rescuers ourselves.
Extracted from experiences around the world, unified in five premises masterfully by different experts and professionals, let us see what the five pillars of home defense are.
The list is simple
- Avoid
- Arm yourself
- Barricade yourself
- Inform
- Confront
Avoid
It is clear and simple, leave the threat area. Common sense is evident, if it is possible to avoid the threat we will do it. For this we will have security rings one and two active and prepared, alarms, lights, locks, bars, barking dogs, etc. Much of what has been discussed in the previous articles.
Convince yourself, want to be Rambo or the warrior princess Xena with the integrity of our loved ones at stake, is a stupidity. If it is possible to flee, do so.
How does our house sound? Surely you know it well, as well as how to escape and leave it. If you can get out, do it.
But of course, young children, elderly, sick, and/or disabled family members, are factors that will often prevent it, forcing us to defend the “ultranza” of a position. Very cinematographic? Maybe.
But what is clear is that if avoiding and leaving the house is not feasible, we enter the point that we will see next week, arm yourself.
Arm yourself with the decision to fight and use those weapons. Our loved ones demand it.
And nobody abandons his or her loved ones, right?
