Home Defense Plan for Immediate Aftermath

Immediate aftermath of an attack in your home is an important time that you need to plan ahead for. Just because the attacker's down doesn't mean that your fight or at least your critical incident is necessarily over. And this is something that often gets overlooked when you think about your plan for that critical incident. When the bad guy comes into your house, you react, you respond, if you are using force, you put that bad guy down, you make sure your family's safe, that's the first thing you want to do but the reality is you need to remember just because the bad guys down, doesn't necessarily mean that the fight is over. An attacker that goes down, or an attacker that turns around and runs around a corner isn't necessarily not going to be a threat.

Attackers might get back up, attackers might only run around the corner and stage for another attack or be waiting for you to see if you're gonna come out of that bedroom or come out of that barricade area or even come out of your house to try to get to a vehicle. So remember, just because the attacker's down doesn't mean you can let your guard down. You wanna keep your firearm in the ready, you wanna keep your eyes on that threat. Don't approach the threat, you don't need to go over there and secure a weapon, you don't need to go over there and try to put someone into custody, what you need to do is keep your eyes on that threat, continue to try to contact law enforcement, try to get out of another exit if you can, and take your family with you. Another thing you need to worry about is multiple attackers.

We could have a multiple attacker home invasion situation where you only saw one bad guy but there was another bad guy maybe coming in through another entrance or waiting out on your front porch or that came in when it heard shots fired. Remember multiple attackers are always an option for the bad guy and always something you need to be worried about when you're inside of your home defending yourself and your family. The next thing you wanna worry about is medical issues, where you injured? Was any member of your family injured? When you stage your emergency equipment, when you stage the phone, when you stage the lights, when you stage the firearms, the ammunition, the body armor whatever it is that you're actually staging you also wanna make sure that you have medical equipment.

Normal things like compression bandages, you might wanna have a tourniquet, you might also wanna have some type of hemostatic agent. The reality is that if you are using force, you're probably defending yourself from a forceful attack, at least you should be. That forceful attack might already have been perpetrated against you or your family and medical assistance is something that you should be at least as trained as defensive action in when we talk about that critical incident inside of your home. So the first level of immediate aftermath is making sure that the attack is really over. The second one is medical care for you or your family.

And the third one of course, is going to be dealing with law enforcement. Now we've talked about the idea of how to deal with law enforcement when they come close to you, you've got a firearm in your hand, you wanna be able to make sure you don't get shot and you don't end up shooting a police officer when they're coming in to protect you or your family. But once the attack is over and the guns are put away, you're going to find yourself being interviewed by the police. You might even find yourself being put in custody, you might yourself actually charged with a crime. But before those handcuffs get put on or at least before you get formally arrested for a crime, that's the time you have to explain to the officer exactly what happened.

And there are several things that you're going to want to explain to the officer, you wanna make sure they understand that a crime was being perpetrated against you, if they come in and there's someone lying on the ground and you have a firearm in your hand, and you fired shots into that person at that point the only crime that they have evidence of is you shooting another human being. You're gonna need to point out things like, here's where they broke my window, here's where they kicked in my door, you're gonna need to point out there's the weapon. Maybe you're going to point out damage that was done to you, maybe you're going to point out injury to your family member, maybe you're going to point through footprints on your bedroom door where the person was trying to kick their way in through your barricade. This evidence of attack, the evidence of assault, the evidence of threat, these are all things that you need to point out. If you think that your apartment mates may be home, they may be on the other side of the wall and they were hearing the screaming, they were hearing the yelling, they were hearing you try to defend yourself and tell the guy to leave, make sure they know, hey, my neighbors are home, talk to them they probably heard the whole thing.

Whatever it is you need to make sure they understand there was a crime, there was a threat, here's the evidence, here's the witnesses, and I'm the best witness to explain that. Remember these things in the immediate aftermath of an assault inside your home.