My armed and dangerous wife?

I realize not everybody loves guns as much as I do, but you’ve got to have a way to defend yourself against a home invasion. Some people choose baseball bats, others choose knives, and my wife and I choose guns.

Of course, the gun is a tool of last resort, which is why we also have an alarm system that will hopefully deter criminals in the first place, and keep me from ever having to use my firearm to protect my family.

An important thing to remember with that alarm system is to actually use it (you may laugh, but I come across so many home invasion stories where people forgot to turn their alarms on) and remember to even use it when you’re at home by placing the alarm in “home mode.”

“Home mode” typically means the motion sensors are turned off so you can walk freely around the house, but all of the entry sensors are still active so if someone tries to enter the home through a door or window the alarm will go off.

In fact, a friend of mine named Dennis who lives in Texas had a home invasion while he was at home watching a movie. He forgot to put the alarm in “home mode” and he ended up getting in a shootout with the intruders because he realized way too late that somebody was in his home. Thankfully, neither he nor his wife was injured and the intruders were eventually caught.

The bottom line is, get an alarm and use it, and then have a plan for what you’re going to do when that alarm goes off.

For example, the other day I thought I was going to be gone from the house for a long time because of several meetings I had. I ended up getting home early and when I walked into my house the alarm immediately sounded because my wife had set it in home mode.

It took me only a few seconds to shut off the alarm, but by the time I did, my wife was already at the top of the stairs with her Glock 19 ready to stop an intruder. (I jokingly asked her if this is how she planned to get rid of me by making it look like an accident. Like most of my jokes, she was not amused.)

My point is, my wife and I have a very simple plan of getting our guns from our rapid access safes and going to the top of the stairs. We’ll make sure the intruder knows we have a gun and that we want him to leave our house. But if the intruder is so strung out on drugs or alcohol and ends up running up our stairs to attack us, we will obviously defend ourselves.

I’m happy to know that because my wife and I have a plan she didn’t have to freak out and wonder what she should do the other day when I set the alarm off. She knew exactly what to do and was in place in just a few seconds.

Even if you’ve got your home defense plan down cold, does your spouse also know exactly what to do? Maybe over dinner tonight you could have a short discussion of what everyone should do if your alarm ever goes off.