PREPARING TO KEEP YOUR FAMILY SAFE

Effective training in shooting and tactics to defend your family.

Understanding how home invasions occur can help you defend against them. Looking at recent crime statistics, there are about 1 million burglaries every year in the USA. Victims are present in over one quarter (27.6%) of burglaries. Over 11 000 burglaries in 2021 also involved assault of the resident. 44% occur at night, and over 40% of home invasions involve more than one attacker.

Prior to an incident, you must develop the skills and ability that these statistics suggest may be necessary. If you have never shot at night or never engaged multiple targets in quick succession, or learned to shoot, move and use any cover afforded by your house to your advantage, you will more than likely fall short in your ability to defend your home. There are skills we can teach you and your family to make your response to any threat more effective. These include key aspects of physical and psychological performance that can maximize your chances of success.

Factors that will influence your ability to successfully defend your home and family include:

• Selecting appropriate, reliable equipment suitable for your home.

• Setting up your equipment effectively.

• Storing your equipment so it is accessible very quickly yet keeping it safely and securely away from kids and intruders.

• Installing effective, layered, early warning systems.

• Training regularly and consistently with your equipment so you are intimately familiar with it.

• Developing a high level of situational awareness.

• Developing a high degree of shooting proficiency.

• Developing skills to move through your house safely should remaining hidden not be an option.

• Understanding weapon effects in your home.

• How the concepts of cover and concealment apply in your home.

• Developing a simple, clear action plan for every member of your family.

• Knowledge of techniques that allow you to function under extreme stress.

EQUIPMENT

Equipment consists of firearms, ammunition, holsters, sights, lights, lasers, slings and other associated accessories. Considering you may have less than 10 seconds to react, you must have instant access to your gun and react very quickly. You most likely will not even have time to find your pants, let alone put on body armor, a belt rig or a helmet. Your training and practice must reflect this.

Some things to consider include what weapon/s you have chosen for home defense. How and where do you store them? Do you need accessories like lights on your firearms and if you do, how do you set them up? Are you able to safely and accurately hit a target at the distances relevant to your house, while under stress, with that gun? What other resources do you have? How do you set them up and use them to the best effect? What other equipment is available to enhance your safety?

We can advise you on equipment selection and set up that is best for your unique circumstance, and how to carry or store them ready for an emergency.

SHOOTING PROFICIENCY IN HOME DEFENSE

The typical static shooting at a single paper target that a lot of people do on a standard range is a start, but the application of that type of shooting is often lacking when it comes to real life scenarios. If you are surprised, you will most likely not have time to get into a proper stance, your grip may be less than optimal, and you may not have time to even align your sights perfectly. Close range self-defense shooting is different to static, flat range shooting. Considering that about 40% of home invasions involve more than one attacker, how do you effectively engage multiple attackers? Many ranges will not even allow you to shoot and move in the manner that you will need to defend your home. We will teach you the basics and then progress to more advanced and realistic methods.

We will teach you effective dry practice drills and how to use simulation to develop and maintain weapon handling skills. It does not negate the need to live fire, but it can save you considerable time, money and ammunition. Good dry practice can slow down skill fade and help develop good “combat behaviors”. It also allows you to practice drills that may not be permitted at your range, such as shooting on the move and engaging multiple targets in different directions. Most importantly, it can give you familiarity of the conditions in the house you will be defending. If done correctly, time spent dry firing or using simulation and practicing at home is never wasted.

TACTICAL TRAINING FOR HOME DEFENSE

It takes many months to train soldiers or tactical police to become proficient in the complete skill sets required to be competent Close Quarter Battle (CQB) exponents. Their training will prepare them for most scenarios they will come across on operations. However, without multi-million dollar facilities and thousands of rounds to practice, the methods used to train soldiers and police need to be adjusted to fit the limited resources we have. To be clear, there is no need to learn multi-team, multi-entry night assaults of complex urban structures to defend your home – that is not what we teach. We teach basic skills, relevant to you and your home, most of which can be found open source. However, the devil is in the detail. Some techniques are clearly better than others and all require good instruction and a lot of coordinated practice to master.

Regardless of how well trained you are or how much you practice, entering a room with potentially armed intruders is not safe. There is no magic technique that will enable you to do it without risk. At all times law enforcement should be called as soon as you can safely do so, and you should avoid the fight where possible. As such, clearing a house or entering a room with possibly armed intruders is not advised.

However, there may be occasions where you have no choice but to act to save lives before law enforcement can arrive. If your life or the lives of your family are imminently under threat, you have every right to defend yourself and them. Learning how to do that effectively and minimizing the risks involved through training and practice is essential.

Should you be faced with no other choice to protect your family, you may have to leave your safe room, enter into or exit from rooms or move through your house to an exit, there are many factors that will determine how you lower the risk of doing so.

Your knowledge of CQB tactics are critical. Your shooting ability and weapon handling skills are critical. Your equipment is critical. There are many small details that can make the difference between success and failure. What tactics work best in your home? How does your house design and furniture layout influence the tactics you choose? Can you adjust the layout of your furniture to maximize your chances of success? How good is your fitness and mobility? How do you control extreme levels of stress and fear? Do you have injuries? Are you night blind or do you have other vision impairment? All these factors must be considered to tailor a plan that will work for you and your family.

We will demonstrate advantages and disadvantages of various techniques and help you choose the most suitable for you, your family, and your house. We can teach you how to move tactically through your house, including room entry and clearance drills, hallway drills, stair drills and whatever else is required in your home. You will be taught how to contain or eliminate a threat, how to defend your family and how to make your house safer. A detailed but simple plan will be developed with you that includes actions by you and every member of your family.

THE ABILITY TO FUNCTION UNDER EXTREME STRESS

Understanding your reaction to fear, physical and psychological stress and your fight, flight or freeze response is a key aspect of successful action. You cannot separate physical and mental skills, and they must be incorporated into your shooting and tactics training and not just learned separately. To say that another way, skill training in firearms is not complete unless the mental and psychological aspects are trained at the same time as the physical component of the skill. Learning to control your arousal and body responses requires extensive practice before an incident.

We will show you several methods to do this and work with you to develop techniques that work for you to calm yourself when required, as well as to ‘psych’ yourself up if that is required to fit any circumstance you may encounter. Daily self-practice of these skills is essential.