Real life SHTF, what to do?

[duke40]

Storm doors and windows will at least give you a few more seconds. That buys you enough time to get to the flashlight and pistol in the top of your closet if God forbid you need to use it.

This is one reason I like having an upstairs bedroom. It buys me even more time to secure the family and me in the secure room.

 

[MudPuppy]

i like to leave hammers laying around.

You have kids?? I guaranteeee you it's 1000 times more dangerous to leave hammers lying around my house than a gun.

 

[pax]

What options does a guy with 5 active kids have?

Well. ...

I also have five active kids. Mine are a little older now (17, 15, 13, 12, 11) than they were when I first got into defensive firearms (at the time, the baby was around 3 or 4 yrs old). And the only real reason we didn't have defensive firearms before that time was because I could not figure out how to secure them from the children.

Solution was twofold:

1) I carry during the day. When I get up in the morning, I put on my holster & gun along with my clothes, and wear it all day long whether I am inside the house or out of it. I figured I might not know what the little darlings were up to in the next room, but I could know for darn sure they weren't getting into my gun when it was right there on my hip.

2) At night, I lock my bedroom door. Yes, that involved some serious rethinking of bedtime priorities, and we installed a "real" lock on the master bedroom door -- a deadbolt intended for exterior doors. We had long since retired the baby monitor; I purchased a new one & installed it in the younger kids' bedroom so I wouldn't feel guilty about always always always shutting my own bedroom door. Their bedroom doors, too, are always closed at bedtime; ask a firefighter sometime whether that's a good idea or not & they will tell you it is.

So. The gun comes with me to bed, and is not locked away where we can't get it. I don't retire until the kids are in bed, and when I do, I lock the bedroom door behind me. There's a little safe near my bed where the gun sleeps at night; I put it in a fanny pack at bedtime & put the whole thing into that safe. If I need to leave my room in the middle of the night, I either lock the safe or put on the fanny pack over my robe before I open the bedroom door. And in the morning, I get dressed before I leave the room, or wear the robe and fanny pack until I am ready to get dressed.

Not the solution for everyone, I know. But it's the one that worked for us.

More about adventures with kids & guns on my site.

pax

 

[chipp]

his and hers

I just purchased this on E-bay for 125. free shipping. I believe there are more.

Push button entry. And has a spring to open the door it is very fast

 

[gyp_c2]

yup...

...teach the kids and make it your religion...They'll follow if you lead...

 

[lesjones]

I have kids. I use the DAC SportSafe.

Something else to think about - leave some blunt weapons around in various rooms even if you have guns. Things like baseball bats, fire extinguishers, big 5D cell Maglites, or a cast iron frying pan in the kitchen. They're harmless to kids, but can be handy if you're caught without a gun.

I keep a 5 D cell Maglite next to that safe.

 

[SniperStraz]

Fox bear pepper spray.

I don't know if you've ever seen bear spray in use, but it seems to me that with that large of a stream it would fill up a bedroom pretty quickly; incapacitating both the intruder and the home owner.
Just my .02

 

[Bazooka Joe71]

1. Teach kid's the four rules.
2. Get a gun safe with a key for the bedside, and leave your car keys in the safe...You won't be able to leave without seeing it needs to be locked.
3. Get a german shepard like mine. An intruder wouldn't make it 2 steps into the house before his arm gets ripped off.

 

[obxned]

Dogs

We have 2 large houndish dogs, gentle as can be with babies and kids, but suspicious of adults. Sometimes it can be annoying when they bark at someone just walking in the street, but they are a very good early warning system. Anyone approaching the house day or night knows there are a couple of big-sounding dogs in here. There are easier pickings elsewhere, so I am quite sure we can save the OO for deer season.

 

[Bezoar]

Its very limited as to what to do in this situation. State laws pretty much want you to have the firearms dissambled into various components locked in seperate areas of hte house if you have children with ammo locked up seperately form all gun parts.

The neighbors experience would have had them all getting killed while they played "seek daddies firing pin". Same goes for having it hidden in the desk, or in the closet or all of the other ideas mentioned. If your woken up at 2 am your typicall panic.
Most people when they have a firealarm or big alarm go off at night or any time they are asleep they pretty much loose higher brian skills, they just go into panic mode and forget the most basic of things such as how to open the window to escape the house fire, let laone have the faculties to get a keyring, find the right key out of 20 other identical keys, and then get the drawer or cabinet unlocked to get the gun.

Id personally reccommend that they just keep a loaded gun next to the bed at night, and what ever parent stays home has access to a gun, preferably tucked in a holster.

 

[tn-dave]

You have kids?? I guaranteeee you it's 1000 times more dangerous to leave hammers lying around my house than a gun.

My father-in-law let my nephew "help" him take out the walls of a bedroom he was remodeling. Basically he let him smash the walls with a hammer.
Well he came back a couple of weeks later after the drywall was finished and ready to paint. You guessed it, my nephew went straight to the bedroom, picked up a hammer that was laying there and proceeded to smash away.


The more I read some of these threads, the more I'm glad I spent the money on a good alarm system and monitoring service. It has a "stay" and "away"
function (the motion detectors are off while we're home). I think the insanely loud siren, and the flashing strobe on the front porch would make a thief take two steps inside and turn right back around leave.
Or at the very least, they would only do a two minute grab and go.
I do need to make some upgrades to secure valuables when we aren't home.