Lately I’ve been studying home invasions. Invariably, when a defensive firearm is involved, one of the intended victims has to run to some other part of the house to retrieve a gun. Some are successful in this and quite a few are not. The firearm is rarely retrieved before a family member is injured.
The most important thing to understand about home invasions is that they happen in an almighty hurry. The homeowner has only a few seconds in which to mount a successful defense. Mounting a quick defense is more important than what kind of defense gun you have, what caliber it is, or how many rounds of ammunition it carries.
For some reason, all too many gun owners think that their home defense gun should be somewhere in the bedroom. All of which is fine if one happens to be in the bedroom when the door gets kicked in. I would suggest that those folks need to look at the amount of time they spend in the rest of the house, some distance from the bedroom and that defense gun.
In order to effectively deal with a violent home invasion, the defense gun needs to be close at hand regardless of where in the house the homeowner might be. Some folks resolve this by stashing firearms throughout the house so that one will always be relatively near. The problem with this is that those guns may be discovered by guests in the home who are unauthorized, or untrained, in their management. The other problem would be if there are children in the home who don’t understand gun safety.
Another solution, and one of the best, is to simply have a defensive handgun on your person throughout all of your waking hours. This solves the problem of having it instantly available should an invasion occur. And it also keeps it secure from unauthorized persons, since you have care, custody and control of the firearm at all times.
I wish that I could tell you exactly what you should do regarding the location of the home defense gun, but there are just too many factors to be considered. The smart thing to do is for each person to consider their own situation and find ways to keep a defensive firearm as close to hand as possible. The thing to keep uppermost in your mind is that you will only have just a few seconds to respond effectively to the criminal invasion of your home. How will you meet the challenge?
