Lever Action Defense Scenario

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Let's take a look at a typical home defense situation and how it would play out if we were going to choose to use a lever action for defense of ourselves or other people in the family. Of course, if we start out in an area near the closet where we keep the rifle stored and we heard something, we heard someone screaming we might make that 911 call. We might respond immediately. We probably don't keep our firearm loaded if it's just in a closet. In a safe or another secure location, that may be the case. Maybe I'm keeping the rifle in a place that's secure to me, but not locked down not someplace where I'd want to assure myself that no one was ever going to be able to get to it without appropriate means. Whether it be a lock or a key or a combination to that lock or some other mechanism to keep it from someone handling it. If someone were to handle this rifle, however. The fact that it's not loaded, that it's not cocked, would keep them from being able to hurt themselves with it unless they took certain steps to manipulate it. I think it's one of the things that we have to understand about responsible firearms ownership is that at this point, this rifle can't be used to hurt someone unless they take action to chamber a round and fire a round or obviously use it as a club, which could be said of any other object like it. At this point, by racking the lever open and closed, we've now chambered a round. So we keep the rifle at times with the magazine loaded this is a completely appropriate way to keep the rifle, if you know that it is secure. And that no one is likely to just bump into it or accidentally reach down to grab it. We certainly wouldn't want to keep it loaded. It's important at this point to remember, we've put it into a half-cocked situation with a manual safety on. We want to take that manual safety off, whatever type it is, if we're about to go use it in a home defense situation. So again, let's look at what the scenario is. I'm in my home, I have a family member screaming or I've heard someone moving through the house and threatening me. Barricade isn't an option because I've got to go check on my other family member or help them. Escape isn't an option for exactly the same reason. If that family member wasn't there. And my only escape option was to go forward and a barricade option wasn't viable. I would still need to take these exact same steps. Remember, escape or barricade is always going to be a better option than confrontation. But, there are times when we are going to be motivated to move forward, to check on a family member or to get to that escape area. Hopefully we've had time to make a 911 call, maybe that's the case, maybe it's not. If it was, we would certainly have made that call and then we would have taken our cell phone, kept it on and either put it in a pocket or kept it in our belt or kept it somewhere. We want to keep that line open. If we've made from a hard line, once again we're going to leave that phone off the hook so that the 911 operator has a connection and we can get back to the phone and of course they can monitor some of what's going on and let the officers know if there were shots fired for example, or if someone were screaming for help. Now, before I move forward, of course I'm going to get the rifle into a ready position where it's mounted up here on my shoulder and rotated down so that the muzzle is depressed. As I get close to this corner of course I want to keep it down so that I'm not putting it up in an area where someone can grab it. Or if someone were to come around the corner, pin the rifle up against me. The other most important reason to keep that muzzle down is because we don't want to point this rifle at anyone who may be someone we don't want to shoot. Right now I'm obviously filming a training DVD for instructional purposes. And as the camera moves in front of me to follow this movement, my muzzle is not pointed at the camera man or anyone else who may be typically what we would consider down-range. The same is true in home defense situation, your kids and your family members that you're moving forward to secure that you're moving forward to see if they're okay that you're moving forward to get to the safe room or moving to go towards them so that they can escape a situation. They're down range, keeping the muzzle depressed keeping your finger off the trigger and following all those important safety rules that we have, are what's really important. Understanding that people are going to be downrange that you may not want to hit, is part of responsible firearms use. Keeping the rifle down, in the end in it's safer. And it also gives us the ability to stay away from this corner. And we've talked about reactionary gap and tactical movement. We've had exactly the same situation here, as I go around this corner to see if anyone's in the hall, I'm slicing the pie and staying far back. If there was a threat that I recognized I would then be able to bring the rifle up and engage that threat. This hallway looks clear, so I'm going to proceed forward. And we've talked about the fact that you can't clear a house when you're alone and tactical movement is something that's usually done by a team of people. As I come to this intersection I've got an option to go to the right or to the left, a typical tactical team, a SWAT team or a military team would of course, then one person each way and make sure that we were being as safe as we could. I have to use the probability that my threat is to the right, which is wherever this screams and where I've heard the noise in order to know which side to address, especially with a long gun, because it's incredibly hard to swing from one direction to another. I have to be sure that I'm committing to the right area before I make that commitment. If I have no idea where the threat is, I probably shouldn't be moving forward. I should be moving forward in the direction of where my children are, where the family members are, where my safe room is, or where I'm going to be able to escape from the situation. So either way, you're going to have a good idea of which direction you need to be focused on. Doesn't mean you ignore the other direction but you certainly concentrate on the higher probability area, which for me is now this room over here as I get to the corner and I don't see anything immediately, I can then check. And as I check, I want to orient the rifle with me. It does me no good to keep the rifle over here and look this way. You may see that on TV, but it doesn't work. Turning this way, so that if I needed to again, I could bring that rifle up and address a threat in this direction is the only way to properly turn and check an area. Returning to my higher probability threat area, I keep as much of a reactionary gap as I can as I slice the pie and continue to move forward, looking for family members or that potential threat. Always keeping a reactionary gap and keeping the muzzle depressed. Again, we don't want to point the rifle at someone we don't want to shoot. We're only going to raise the rifle when we recognize a threat where appropriate response would include pointing a firearm at them and potentially firing around that could be lethal. Stop, drop the gun. Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.