SECURE YOUR DOORS!
SECURE YOUR DOORS!
This means the front door, back door, garage walk in door, garage overhead door, slider door, basement entry door, any entrance door. You should also consider securing your safe room door. Whether it’s a dedicated safe room, your bedroom, the basement, etc. Use quality deadbolts, door armor (reinforced striker plates, hinge shields, and pry protection plates), door reinforcement latches, and alarm sensors. The real purpose of these tools is to buy time. Time is hope, time allows you to improve your odds of survival if you’re home and lower the odds of the intruder/s from being successful in getting in and stealing, damaging, or hurting someone inside.
Garage doors, first and foremost, don’t leave your garage door remote in a car parked outside unless you remember to lock out the hardwired opener in the garage, so the remote openers won’t work. Check the pull string length and location. Can it be pulled through the weather strip at the top of the door from the outside? For slider doors use shatter protection film and a drop in bar to lock the slide from opening.
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FIREARMS
Firearms are great if you have trained to use them, but a gun should be your last option. See the post on the 4 pillars of use of force post. Unprepared it can take as little as 10 seconds for an intruder to be in your house. Could you find your gun, and prepare to defend yourself in 10 seconds? What if the person with the gun access is not home, but the rest of the family is home? If no one is home, thieves look for guns first. There is no substitute for time. The more passive barriers to entry the more time you gain and the intruders lose.
A DOG
A dog can be a great deterrent. However, a treat or a well-placed bullet is probably going to take care of your dog. Not all dogs will attack an intruder, they might bark or even growl, but might run off leaving you to deal with the intruder or intruders by yourself. Still a dog makes a great warning alarm and they’re lovable.
AN ALARM SYSTEM
Alarm systems do nothing to stop an intruder from entering your house! Your alarm makes noise and if wired into a dispatch will alert authorities. That is all it does. Police response times in many communities are in excess of 40 minutes and is more than 20 minutes in most places. Alarms are not bad and we highly recommend them. Just make note that an alarm is your second line of defense. Alarms don’t work until an entry point is breached. The police aren’t notified by an active alarm system until the intruder has made the physical attempt to enter. Your barriers to entry decide your time before contact.
A SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD
Crime in rural America has increased significantly and recent unrest means that instability exists virtually everywhere. Gated communities with security guard services are a deterrent, but not full-proof. Sophisticated thieves know that the higher end homes typically have more valuable goods and are more apt to take the risk for the chance at a bigger payoff.
WINDOWS
Thieves can break a window to gain entry. However, the vast majority of break-ins happen through a door. Typically the walk-in garage door. Still, you should consider window anti-shatter film, window locks, and window alarm sensors. Good exterior lighting, prickly bushes, and shrubs around windows help to make those windows less of a target.
The purpose of locks, bars, barriers, door armor, 3″ screws, and overall good pre-planning is to buy time. Time for law enforcement to arrive, time to get to a safe area of the house, time to get out another door, or window, time to get your family to a better place of safety, time to get to a firearm and hold up in a safe room. Time to put you and your family in a better position of survivability. Time increases your odds of winning the encounter and lowers the intruder’s chances of stealing your valuables or worse, stealing a loved one’s life.
“If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your home.” Psalms 91:9-10
Deter Detect Deny
