During my formative years of military training, my mentors were SE Asia combat veterans of small unit patrols and recon teams who had developed gunfight survival techniques into a nuanced art form.
Everything was important when you intended to walk 4-6 men through an enemy backyard teeming with hundreds of potential armed opponents.
The littlest things that might provide an edge were proposed, tested in real life, and then adopted as SOP (if successful). Things like patrol base procedures and defensive measures when resting.
Things like not taking off your boots to sleep. Sleeping while wearing your 40 pound load bearing harness of ammunition and water. Weapon
always in your arms or within hands reach from a sleeping position. Keeping a radio watch. Pre-planned Rally Points. Break Contact Drills. Encirclement Breakout Drills. Procedures for an environment where death could literally sneak up on you in the dark.
Those situations and solutions were extreme, but the thought process translates well into doing things for home defense that give you an edge...in terms of time, lethality, or contingency preparation.
During the late 80's (early 90's?), Massad Ayoob wrote a great article about having a bedroom roll-out rig. In that particular article, he was extolling the virtues of a specific lightweight soft armor vest with pockets and fold-out police ID logo (as he is an LEO), but the principles and considerations he used to justify such a piece of kit stuck with me. I thought he was dead nuts correct in his assumptions and his well thought out preparations.
He advocated a kit you could place on your body (in seconds) that included what you needed to mount a defense, but also allowing you to have your hands free for other tasks (or additional weaponry...like a long gun).
It's 3 AM. You are awoken by the sound of a break-in. Groggy but coming to some sort of realized state of alert. How are you dressed (or not dressed)? Where are your shoes? What the hell is that noise? Where are my damn glasses? OK...got the gun off the night stand...got the extra magazine in my other hand, but I don't have a pocket for it on my shorts/pajamas/robe/birthday suit. Oops...the Surefire just dropped of the nightstand while I was reaching for it in the dark. Aaaah, Crap...my little child is screaming...I've got to move to her right now. Oops...my slipper just fell off one foot. OK...got the Surefire and a magazine in one hand...got my handgun in the other. Should I drop it all and get the 870 out of the closet? Nope. No time. Off I go, barefoot, a gun in one hand, the other hand full of loose items that I can't use without dropping one or more of them. Forgot the cell phone in the excitement.
Or...
It's 3 AM. You are awoken by the sound of a break-in. Groggy but coming to some sort of realized state of alert. You roll out of bed, reach for your soft armored vest rig and slip it over your head and arms...or snap on your police-style duty belt...either one is on your body in a few seconds... regardless of how you are dressed or not dressed.
If you have a soft vest rig, you are now wearing bullet resistant soft armor, with a handgun holstered to the front, with reloads attached, a powerful flashlight already attached, a spare set of house/car keys attached, and with some sort of bleeder stopper kit attached. Perhaps a piece of photo ID and a spare cell phone. It all weighs less than ten pounds and you don't have to fumble for anything. You have everything you might need to defend, contact 911, treat arterial bleeding, search, get yourself through a locked exterior door (after you have gone outside and gotten locked out), or use your car to evacuate family or flee the scene. You have a place to holster your handgun when it becomes no longer appropriate for you to have it in hand. Lastly, you have ID to confirm who you are to LEO responders.
If you go with the duty belt rig...you have the same items, plus maybe a baton or pepper spray.
Either way, you have bought precious time by not having to think about or search for the things you need. NOW you have the extra seconds to grab the 870, or the AR, or get into some slip-on TEVA sandals...or simply get to where you need to be next and hopefully stay ahead of the power curve.
99% of the time, it's just a late night noise to be investigated. Yeah we all know to fortify the bedroom threshold and await 911, but in reality...you know you are going to poke around your own house unless you've gotten clear indication that someone actually
has broken in.
Having a rig means you can perform that investigation with the appropriate tools at hand...without having to draw down on your teenage son returning wasted from a late night party...or the cat getting into the driveway trash can...or advance, gun in hand, on the police officer who just arrived at your doorstep.
You are not playing Cop or Soldier dress up...you are merely executing a thoughtfully rehearsed contingency plan. Cops & Soldiers wear duty rigs because they face situations requiring multiple tool choices and options. So should you. Some of the same folks who poo-poo the idea of a life and death configured home self defense rig, wouldn't think twice about wearing an equivalent special purpose hunting vest and buttpack for an afternoon of casual bird hunting.
After years of wearing heavy plate/soft armor, festooned with grenades, radios, ammo, water, etc. while in Afghanistan and Iraq...the idea of quickly donning a piece of featherweight soft armor is a no-brainer. I can be wearing that item in seconds and give myself an edge before defending hearth and home.
You're paranoid until something happens. Afterwards, they call you "well prepared".
