Armed Home Defense Tactics: Negotiating Corners
Rob PincusDescription
Home-Defense Tactics Considerations
In these home-defense tactics, you need to think about how you’re going to move and always remember that you are moving toward a good guy — your family member. There may or may not be a threat. Yes, a home invader may have grabbed your spouse or child — or your spouse or child may have cut themselves in the kitchen or fallen in the bathroom.
What if you think an intruder is in the home? Rob understands the natural impulse to draw your handgun as you approach the distressed family member. Maybe you will extend the firearm as you come around a corner and even put your finger on the trigger. Rob strongly urges you not to do this as it may result in your accidentally shooting an innocent person, as happens all too often when a person is too ready to shoot.
Avoiding Unintentional Shootings
Rob believes that at most you should keep your home-defense weapon in the high compressed ready position, not at extension in a firing position. However, it is even better to keep the firearm in a staged position. This means the firearm is in the holster and you have a good firing grip and are ready to draw the firearm upon confirmation that you need to do so. Employing these home-defense tactics make it much less likely that you will shoot someone unintentionally.
Objections
If you are thinking it doesn’t make sense to keep your gun in the holster if there might be a threat in the house, Rob replies that you do so because there might be threat in the house, but there might not be. The amount of time it takes to bring the gun into action if needed is very quick.
More Tips
Rob has more home-defense tactics tips for negotiating corners, dealing with a bad guy at close quarters, and making sure that bad guy can’t take your gun away.
Imagine for a second that you're in your house and you're going about your business, maybe it's the evening, maybe it's the middle of the day, maybe it's the morning before you go outta the house to go to work. You're wearing your concealed carry firearm, you've got your flashlight in your pocket. Maybe your cell phone's in your pocket. All of a sudden, you hear a scream, or some other alert from another part of the house that makes you think someone is in danger and they may have a threat with them in that part of the house. You're gonna go check on that situation.
Obviously, you're going to come in contact with corners, stairwells, potentially even doorways. You need to think about how you're going to move, and always remember, you know that you're moving towards a family member, you're moving towards a good guy. There may or may not be a threat. Maybe somebody slipped and fell, maybe somebody hurt themselves in the kitchen. Or maybe someone kicked the back door in, has grabbed your spouse or a family member and is taking them at knife or gunpoint into a back bedroom.
Imagine that scenario playing out as I'm coming up from the lower level of this house, and moving through towards that potential threat. The more I think that it is actually a threat, the more likely I am to want to get my firearm ready. But if I pull my handgun out and I start moving around these corners, especially if I were to go to an extended shooting position, risk putting my finger on the trigger as most people do, even after training when they think they're about to shoot as they go around the corner. We could end up in one of those situations that happen all too often. Those tragic situations where someone shoots a family member or one good guy shoots another good guy because they are too ready to shoot.
Is that such a thing? Absolutely. If I drive my gun out from my body, this is a shooting position. That's why we always stress the compressed ready positions. In this type of a scenario, I know I'm moving through the house to go check on maybe my wife in a back bedroom, or the kids that were in the kitchen.
I really don't need to have my firearm out. In fact, if my firearm is still in the holster, and I go to what we refer to as the staged position, which is a good firing grip but the gun's still in the holster, as I move, I'm infinitely less likely to have any type of problem that would cause me to shoot someone unintentionally. Now, I know the first thing you're thinking is, Rob, it's crazy, why would I keep my gun in my holster if I think there might be a threat in the house? Well, the reason is there might be a threat in the house. If you actually have a threat it might be a situation where you need to shoot.
It might be a situation where you need to shoot quickly. But the reality is this, the time it takes you to get that gun out into a close-quarters shooting situation around this corner or the time that it would take me to get that gun out and drive out to an extended shooting position at someone beyond this corner is very, very, very small. If you say to me that you don't know if you could get the gun into action quick enough, then I say to you, I don't know if you can handle your gun well enough to be walking around with it pointed out in front of you when you know you're going toward someone that you really don't want to hurt. So the staged position is the first important consideration when you're moving around the corners and you're moving your house. Of course, if you have a flashlight, if it's dark at night, you wanna have that flashlight in your non-dominant hand, your support hand.
And that's gonna be used intermittently and indirectly to search for and identify threats or identify your family members. Remember, we're not searching for bad guys. We're not moving through as if we're a SWAT team trying to clear the house. I am specifically moving to the family member that I believe needs help. If I'm in the staged position, or if I'm potentially in a SUL type position, this high compressed ready with the muzzle pointed low.
When I get close to this corner, I wanna make sure that I don't get too close. If I get it too close to this corner, even if I have pulled the gun out, maybe I have a long gun that was staged for defense. As soon as I around this corner, if there was someone standing right here that I couldn't see, they could grab my gun. Now we do have a problem with the gun being in the holster. They could pin the gun down into the holster, or if I were in that poorly executed extended position, they could grab the gun and pull it away from me.
So I wanna make sure, once again, that I keep the gun in close, preferably, without the muzzle pointed out in front of me. Even one-handed I could do this position. Or in the staged position. And then I give myself at least an arms reach if I can to go around this corner. When I go around that corner, of course, I'm gonna look with my eyes before I lead with my feet.
If I had that extended position, again, I might reveal myself. So I'm in that compressed or staged position. I lean out, I don't see anything. I lean out again, I still don't see anything. Now, I can cross this threshold and move past that corner and continue to move towards my family members.
This isn't going to take a long time. I'm not gonna spend 30 seconds sitting there waiting to look, right? I'm coming up the steps, I get to this position. I start looking, I started looking, I start looking and then I decide to go. And that's moving around a corner in a staged position, in an armed home defense situation, when you're moving towards people you care about to make sure they're safe, keep them safe, and of course, always be ready to protect what you love.
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