Last night I had the pleasure of attending KR Training’s AT-2A: Home Defense Tactics course.
The class is what it sounds like: a class about home defense tactics. While a some of the material is stuff you get via other KR Training courses (e.g. AT-1A Low-Light Shooting covers “night” and flashlight techniques, some building clearing issues), what makes this class novel is the presentation. AT-2A is not a range course but is held at the home of a student. This changes the presentation and feel of the course. First, the number of students is small due to the logistics of people going around a home. Second, while Karl does instruct and there is “lecture”, the format ends up being a lot more interactive and full of discussion and Q&A — the smaller class size and the nature of the class just lends to that. For example, Karl would take us into a room and discuss a defensible position in the room, and while doing that some furniture might be moved to create a better position, then each student would take up positions and see how they actually worked out, asking questions, discussing pros and cons.
For the homeowner hosting the event, it’s of course very informative because it’s their house getting reviewed and analyzed. As for the rest of us, the techniques remain the same and you go home with a sense of what to look for. Homework is looking at your home and figuring out how it’s going to work. Some spots in the home may be good, some bad, some ugly. Some things may be able to be changed, other things may just be situations to avoid. You learn how to deal with quiet situations, worst-case situations, low-light situations. How to set up the house, how to deal with common criminal activity (e.g. don’t make things inviting, make their life difficult because if it’s hard, most criminals won’t bother… they want what’s quick and easy).
A good class and most informative.
Stuff From Hsoi 
I was thinking about this just the other day in my house. My MBR is at the SE corner of the house. If I head W down the hall I pass BR#2 on the left (south) and at the end of the hall BR#1 is on the left (south) and the rest of the house is through an opening with no door on the right (north). I’m a right handed shooter.
How do I make the move from the hall into that doorway to check out the living area on the north side of the house? Do I follow the barrel of my gun around the corner? Do I point down at floor and raise my weapon as it clears the wall coming around the corner?
Hell, do I go out the MBR patio door and shoot through the living room window?
I need to make it out to the range with my new flashlight and try out some of the low light shooting techniques you talked about earlier.
I’d have to really see the floorplan of your house to make any comment.
Trying to clear the house (especially by yourself) is well… generally not a good thing. It’s often better to just hunker down. But sometimes that can’t happen, e.g. if you hear wife or kids screaming, and in which case your clearing is just going to be a lot of quick head turning as you run towards the screaming.
And using a rifle to clear the house? difficult, due to narrow spaces. Not impossible, but something worth practicing at least to see how do-able it is with your MBR in your house. For me in most cases, I’ll probably end up using my handgun, but I’d prefer to have the rifle or shotgun if I knew something was up and was able to hunker down. Just all depends.
Bottom line is that you want to make the person stop, leave, go away and keep yourself and your loved ones unharmed (even if they take your TV, that’s what insurance is for and then you get a better one anyway). Going into harms way is the least desirable option, so you want to try to hunker down, be defensible, and utilize ambush. If you must go into harms way, you just have to do the best you can, know your home’s layout and where blind spots are, channels, and other “problem areas”, and then be as quick and aggressive as you can be.
Oh, and a lot of what you need to do is ensure they don’t get there in the first place. Make your home as unappealing as possible from the get go. Avoidance is a better initial strategy.
but something worth practicing at least to see how do-able it is with your MBR in your house.
I was thinking about this post and other things when I came up with an idea for a post that works into this scenario.
I’m going to take a silhouette style target and tape it up in various rooms of my house; then take pictures of it in the middle of the night to show how difficult it is to determine if the “thug” is armed or not.
For practice clearing a house, combine using an airsoft style firearm (pistol or rifle) with a silhouette target taped up by someone else.
Since you won’t know where the target it, you’ll have to practice finding it. Add a coat rack, or an upright vacuum cleaner to the mix so the target can be staged in a hallway or the middle of a room.
Figure out likely scenarios that you’ll have to run — gathering up the kids, finding someone who’s up and getting something to eat,etc.
While I agree avoidance is the best strategy, for some older homes — 1969 in my case, some of the problem spots (glass panes in the door) are costly to fix.
This is definitely a class I would love to take, when is KR Training going to open up a north Texas location?
One thing to consider: do you have to determine if the thug is armed or not? I mean, if this is your house and now someone else is in it (without your permission), I think that’s reason enough to believe something’s amiss. Now of course, that also depends on who else is normally in your house. If say you have other adults (other than your spouse) or kids well… that changes the situation because target identification becomes more critical (vs. someone living alone or knowing that spouse is sleeping beside you).
Nevertheless, it does play into issues of lighting to help make those determinations. Put them in the light, you in the dark. My wife likes to leave lamps on all over the house at night. I used to hate that, but I’ve come to appreciate it because, with the lamps on in the right spots it makes it easy to identify anyone. Plus, cockroaches don’t like light… if the light is always on, the house always illuminated, I figure that helps create some level of deterrant (anything to make me and mine less appealing when the dude is figuring out if my house is worth targeting).
What you should also consider in your exercise there is, not just using objects but using a person. You don’t need any sort of guns (inert training guns or airsoft or otherwise). The key thing here is “can you see me?” and “can I see you?”. Figure out where you can hide yourself… figure out where they can be hidden from you. Having someone else doing that stuff gives you feedback that inanimate objects can’t.
One thing to consider: do you have to determine if the thug is armed or not? I mean, if this is your house and now someone else is in it (without your permission), I think that’s reason enough to believe something’s amiss.
I don’t have to worry about this from a legal perspective (just a personal moral perspective). If you’re in my house without my permission I can legally use lethal force.
Quote from OK Self Defense Act:
A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if:
1. The person against whom the defensive force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle
My problem with hunkering down is that while I have a clear line of sight from the MBR down the hallway both of the kids rooms also open onto that hallway. So, if a strange loud noise happens as someone smashes a window I could possibly have a kid in my field of fire from my optimal defensive point. That’s not acceptable, so I need to move up to where the kids are behind me. That puts me in the door to the living room where I can see much of the house, excluding the basement (which has no windows or doors).
As for the I can see you, can you see me, I used my new flashlight on myself in the bathroom mirror. Man, that thing sucks to get in the eyes from across the room.
Legally? Well… you still could have to worry about it. This is America, Land of the Lawsuit®… we’ll sue you for any reason. Even if you don’t get sued, you may still have to retain a lawyer, deal with a grand jury, investigation, people being upset with you, the court of public opinion… all sorts of potential downsides. Just because you legally can doesn’t always mean it’s something you should do.
Nevertheless like I said, if you end up discovering someone in your home that shouldn’t be in your home well….
Now, do you need to move the kids? Maybe, maybe not. One thing to consider is instructing the kids on what to do in a case like this. Yes I know, your kiddos are still kinda young but they can understand instructions like “if something bad happens, stay put”. But on the same token, you know your house situation best. You may have to come up with strategies, you may have to rearrange things be it room assignments, furniture layouts, etc. to help you make things as advantageous for you as you can.
No one simple answer.
Yeah, we’ve got tornado drills and fire drills. I’m not sure how a stranger breaks into the house drill would work out. It was very hard to answer the question “What if the tornado comes down the stairs to the basement?” 🙂
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Heh heh. That’s cute. 🙂