Category: Home Defense

Hardening the Home: Front Door Pepper Spray

This is the first in a series of short posts about specific security projects I’ve completed over the last few months upon moving into my new house. Some are simple projects, while some are slightly more involved. This will be a simple one.

Many home invasions start with an innocuous knock on the door and the home owner blindly opening the door  like a gracious member of society should for another person. The bad guys count on this and will then force their way in (Example one, two, three). We can upgrade our home’s security and spend a small fortune on cameras, locks, doors, alarms, and guns, but if we bypass all of our security from the inside when we open the door for any Random who knocks, it’s all for naught. The same goes if we leave our doors unlocked. Here’s the Mighty Greg Ellifritz with some information on that topic. Lock your doors. Don’t open the doors unless you’re expecting company. Have a peephole. Don’t be afraid to say no. Don’t let people in your home to borrow a phone if their “car has a flat”. Let them know you’ll call the police so they can help. All of the stuff you already know.

All that said, I know you’re a good person and you want to help. You might find yourself opening the door from time to time. This post is for you.

If you read The Babysitter Home Invader Plan post, you know that having a large can of pepper spray in your safe room is a pretty good way to create a very uncomfortable gauntlet for the home invaders to navigate to get to the safe room door. I was thinking about the likely scenarios that would result in a home invader getting inside when I’m not home. Considering that my mother and wife are home with my son (when I’m out) on occasion, and they are not as distrusting as I am, there might be an occasion where they answer the door to an unknown person. We’re in the suburbs now so there are plenty of Jehovah’s witnesses, gutter cleaning services, and possibly home invaders probing for easy marks. So my wheels were turning and I decided to stage pepper spray at each of the doors that people would logically knock on.

Instructions for Use

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Edit: I have since learned that the 3 in 1 can be problematic for decontamination due to the C.S. component. It is better to get Sabre Red (Pure O.C.) because it’s just pepper extract.

If you’re going to open the door, the hand that will be behind the door will grab the pepper spray from the door frame and keep it at a ‘covert ready’ (behind the door or casually hanging behind the thigh) and a foot acting as a door stop a few inches behind the door. If things go south, you can quickly actuate the safety and spray him (them) down while forcing the door shut. I realize this isn’t ideal, but it beats having to go muscle to muscle against a possibly stronger person on the other side of the door. If it’s nothing (pizza’s here!), you can just as quickly and covertly stow it on the door frame. That’s it.

What You’ll Need:

  • Pepper Spray of your choice. I chose SABRE Red Pepper Spray. It’s an effective formula, and the price is right.
  • Adhesive backed hook and loop strips. I had Velcro Industrial Strength left over from a previous project. Use whatever you can get for cheap. Make sure the adhesive is holding up over time, because having your little kid find a pepper spray can on the ground and accidentally discharging it would make for a lot of nights sleeping on the couch. You could staple the velcro to the wood to assure it stays in place. The industrial quality velcro’s adhesive is very durable, in my experience.

All you need to do is cut a 2″ strip to wrap around the can, and a 1″ strip to adhere to the door frame. Stage it wherever makes sense. I put mine on the hinge side of the door on the door frame.

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I hope this is getting your wheels turning. This is a cheap way to get some peace of mind if you have caretakers at home with your child while you’re out.

Protect the Brood and resist the urge to pepper spray Jehovah’s Witnesses,

Defensive Daddy

More Reading on how to behave around doors:

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/your-tactical-training-scenario-shot-through-the-door

Hardening the Home, Part 1: A ‘Case’ Study

This article will be about how to evaluate your home’s curb appeal to burglars and other scumbags who want to take your stuff and kick your door in while you’re watching TV at night. It will be holistic approach that will build layer upon layer of security without spending an inordinate amount of money. I will be using my house as a ‘case’ study (without giving away too many personal security details) to illustrate the methodology for doing this. In future posts, I’ll highlight the specific upgrades that I’ve done to deselect and harden my home from criminals.

Mission: Systematically evaluate our own homes for vulnerabilities and weaknesses to burglaries, and then harden our homes both physically and by projecting strength with simple budget minded improvements.

What are Burglars looking for when they are choosing a target?

I had been researching and reminding myself about all of the home invasion and burglary statistics I could find over the last several weeks. Then, like a tactical angel, Greg Ellifritz shared a very timely post with some stats and information that was new to me (and more recent). In it, he links to a really neat study “Understanding Decisions to Burglarize from the Offender’s Perspective”. I encourage you to read Greg’s summary of the study so you can get an idea of what sort of person we’re looking at, what they want, how they choose their targets, and what deters them.

For this article, we’re only really interested in what deters them. Here’s a quote from the study,

“Close proximity of other people (including traffic, those walking nearby, neighbors, people inside the establishment, and police officers), lack of escape routes, and indicators of increased security (alarm signs, alarms, dogs inside, and outdoor cameras or other surveillance equipment) was considered by most burglars when selecting a target”

“About 60% of the burglars indicated that the presence of an alarm would cause them to seek an alternative target altogether. This was particularly true among the subset of burglars that were more likely to spend time deliberately and carefully planning a burglary.”

We want to use these facts, and our own common sense to deter and deselect our homes from burglaries and harden against home invasion. To summarize:

The Layered Approach

In order to successfully deter this sort of crime, we need to have a layered approach. We need to project our security to the street, to dissuade bad guys who are ‘shopping’ for a home to burglarize. We must physically harden the points of entry so that if we DO get chosen, we make the entry as difficult as possible. If we can’t harden a point of entry, we have to provide ourselves an early warning to the intrusion. We must lastly have our safe room prepared so that we can have place to make our last stand.

Case Your Own House

  • Walk as far away from your house as you can while still maintaining a view of your house. How far away can you be and still see your home? If you have woods, walk into the tree line, and see what you can see. What doors, windows, entrances can you make out? Are there any shrubs or bushes that block your view of a window or door? Are there any windows without shades or blinds that you can see into? If someone were standing in these perimeter points, would they have a reason to be there besides casing your house (across the street at gas station, for instance)? In urban areas, look to see if you see evidence of people loitering in these observation points (cig butts, spit, empty cans, etc.)
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The large magnolia generally occludes the view from the street. This house was purchased partly because it sits in a cul de sac, in a quiet neighborhood, has a brick front, and large trees spaced around the house for privacy.
  • Now as you walk back, look at routes towards your house. Are there any obvious routes towards the entrances? Are there any natural or man-made obstacles in the way? Anything that would have to be disturbed that you would notice out of place if someone moved towards your house? Are there any fences or natural obstacles? Would these fences hide nefarious activities?
  • Look into your windows. What can you see around shades, between blinds, and through the side lights around the front door? Do you see anything of value like your computer, office, TV, so on. Where could you hide right up against the house that can’t be seen from the inside?
  • Have a friend walk around the perimeter of your house while you stand in different rooms of the house. Where can you see them as they approach the house? Are there any routes that keep them hidden as they approach? How close can they get before you hear them? What does the front porch sound like when someones walking on it? How about the crunchy pea gravel behind the house? Pay attention to how things sound when someone is encroaching on the house.
  • Look at where your external lights illuminate. Are there areas that your motion sensing floods don’t reach? Remember, you want to illuminate both areas you can see, and those you can’t.
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The “Dark Side of the House”. A few entrances, not many lights, minimal view from inside the house. This is the area that I would ‘harden’ first. And have…
  • Look for overgrown shrubs and trees that could hide a bad guy’s movement. Trim the hedges back so that you can see the windows from the road. Burglars aren’t in the business of being seen.
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That evergreen to the left of the stairs has to go. It blocks the front door (framed in side-lights) from view of the road. The bushes on the right are also getting too tall.

MS PAINT DIAGRAMS!

Now I want you to find your house on google.maps. Take a screenshot of the aerial view and paste it into MS Paint. Draw lines that correspond to your view from inside the house looking out. Also draw lines that show where your flood lights or spot lights shine. You will quickly get an idea of the areas that demand attention first. You will see the obvious approach routes, and the places that would be darkest for a bad guy to work. You can get quite elaborate here. You could document which bushes need to be trimmed, where you need shades in the house, and so on.

 arialhouseIn Closing

This is the first step in hardening your house. Think like a bad guy as much as you can. Be devious. Where would you break in? When would you break in? You have to build a plan to break in. Then you have to shut down your own plan with some simple and inexpensive upgrades. We have quickly evaluated how enticing our house looks to potential bad guys. In subsequent posts we will discuss simple tactics to bluff that you have more security than you do, some hardware associated with hardening the house, early warning systems, lighting choices, and the safe practices and the mindset it takes to keep ahead of home invaders and burglars.

Protect the Brood,

Defensive Daddy

Reference:

Jim Grover, “Street Smarts, Firearms, & Personal Security”

The Underwear Gun (T.U.G.)

…police say the pair started demanding money, something the 28-year-old said she didn’t have. That’s when one of the attackers allegedly picked up a kitchen knife, turned on the stove, and put the blade in the flame.

“And then four separate times burnt the 28-year-old female, burnt her face, both of her arms and her stomach,” Small said.

Still she refused to speak, so the crime went further.

“Then picked up the 28-year-old’s two-year-old daughter and threatened to kill the daughter if she didn’t say where the money was,” Small said.

Source

Home invasions are one of my biggest fears when it comes to armed confrontations. I think it’s because they occur inside the most comfortable and trusted shelter we have, our homes. Where you should be able to go into condition white and turn off your vigilance and recharge your batteries. A place where you kiss your child good night shouldn’t be the place that you have to fight for your life. But alas, there are some people on this planet that don’t feel that way. In fact, the kind of predator who breaks into your home when he knows you’re there is a special kind of dangerous.

Burglars are one thing. Those guys don’t necessarily want to interact with you in your home. They want to get in and out with as much loot as possible, as quickly as possible. Home invaders are scary because they know you’re home, and they still want to come in. As a result, I have taken several precautions to prepare for this. In fact, I suppose several of my posts so far have been dedicated to topics that all tie back to defending from home invaders. I mentioned in another article that I carry a gun inside my house. This article will outline the requirements I have for an ‘underwear gun’, the gun I chose for the job, its accessories, the drawstroke for T.U.G., and some of the drills I do with this gun.

Jack Black and I get down like this.

Mission: Choose, outfit, and always carry a pistol meant to be worn around the home.

The requirements I had for an underwear gun:

  • Must be reliable
  • Must be able to be securely held in drawstring sweat pants or exercise shorts, no holster required
  • Be lightweight enough to not pull said shorts down
  • Because I don’t want to wear a holster and I carry a loaded gun with a round in the chamber, double action only or DA/SA is required
  • Be able to find something for less than $325
The Dusk Till Dawn crotch gun was never put on the market, so I needed another solution.

The reliability requirement is obvious. I have no requirement for minimum caliber size for T.U.G., only that it be reliable when I need to use it. As an aside, don’t take my (or anyone’s) word that your gun is reliable. You have to know this for yourself. Small guns (due at least in part to the tight angles that ammo has to feed from magazine to chamber) tend to be very ammunition sensitive. Some ammo will work, others just won’t. You should run a few boxes of your chosen defensive ammo in your underwear gun before you even start to call it reliable. Small guns can even vary in reliability within the same model. It sometimes only matters what month the gun came off of the assembly line.

No Holster!

There is a short list of accessories that allow me to satisfy the second requirement depending on my choice of guns:

  • Universal Clipdraw – Semi-AutoThis is the universal clip draw. I wouldn’t use this on a Glock or any striker fired gun with a loaded chamber. I’d only put it on double action guns, or guns with safeties. It can also be used to replace a flimsy flashlight clip with a very beefy spring steel clip.

  • DeSantis Clip Grip – This is a cool set of grips that has a flare of material on the right side of the gun which can go over the belt and keeps the gun secure inside the waistband. It’s a great update to the Barami Hip Grip, which felt like greased soap and didn’t fill the hand very well. The DeSantis grips are legit, though.
Barami Hip Grip
  • Techna ClipThis is nearly identical to the clipdraws, but they are made for the newer generations of small framed pocket guns. This is what I have on my LCP. They also make left handed versions, which is good for those that need it.

With a double action gun, and an on-board clip to keep it from falling down my pants, I’m in business. You could technically do this with any gun you wanted if you always wear a belt, but my requirements limit the size of the gun I can carry. Which brings me onto my next point.

The weight and size envelope matters. I want something that I can carry in exercise shorts or sweat pants around the house. As a result, I am limited to a pocket gun (mouse gun), usually in a caliber less than or equal to 9mm.  This is my favorite chart for getting an idea of what I should expect when I go to handle different pocket guns. I also satisfy the next requirement by simply looking for a DAO gun in the list.

My last requirement is easy enough to meet. I had my short list of guns that I thought would work, kept an eye out on the used market, and waited for something to pop up.

I have had a KelTec PF9 (9mm), a Smith 442 (.38spl), a Taurus PT22 (.22lr), and now a Ruger LCP (.380) to fit this role. After selling the PF9 to fund a M&P shield, and selling the Taurus to my dad as his underwear gun, I am left with the J-frame and the Ruger. Due to weight and magazine capacity, I find myself carrying the Ruger most often.

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Accessories

  • Techna Clip as mentioned above
  • Crimson Trace Laserguard– I think lasers are a great addition to any gun, especially one with sights as small and difficult to see as the LCP (gen 1). I also am fond of a laser that comes on when forming the full firing grip. It also has the benefit of allowing one to turn the laser off if one trains to relax that middle finger, as situation dictates. Lasers won’t make you control your trigger better, so you’ll still need to do the work.
  • Hogue Handall Grip Sleeve – This makes the grip of the gun just a little bit fatter. This allows a more hand filling feel, as well as a less cramped trigger pull.
  • GARRISON Grip Extension– This cool mag extension allows me to get all of my fingers on the gun. The tail of the mag extension also serves as a hook to keep the grip of the pistol right at my pants line. Without it, and the gun only has one point of contact at the clip, and can roll behind the pants (great for when you require the deepest concealment).image_6

Teeny Weeny Drawstroke

The drawstroke of a gun as small and deeply concealed as the LCP has to be modified a bit in order to build a full firing grip before presenting the pistol. Here’s how I do it:

  • Index the muzzle of the pistol through the pants with your middle and/or ring finger, and your thumb’s pad to the rear of the tang.
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Note: my shirt is tucked so you can see what’s happening. Really, the thumb is used to swim under the shirt material and then indexes on the tang.
  • Press in and up with your middle/ring fingers and slide the pistol up as you slide your thumb behind the pistol.
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The photos were taken with a potato. Excuse the poor quality.
  • Pinch the pistol between your thumb and index finger to lift it high enough to get your fingers wrapped and complete the drawstroke as normal.
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This is what the pinch looks like. The pinch is what lifts it high enough to form the full firing grip.

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Ammunition

This article gave me some ideas about .380 ammo selection. I had previously been using ball ammunition, because I was concerned about penetration and feed issues. I will be buying a few boxes of the top two he mentions in the article to try out.

Training/Drills

Surprise! Nothing is different here. I do what I do with all my other pistols. Dryfire and drills.

Issues Specific to the LCP

In such a small package, the .380 is a snappy little beast. I’m personally good for about 50-75 rounds before El Snatcho gets me and I fatigue to the point of diminishing returns. The hogue and grip extension mitigate this a bit, but only a little. This is an argument for a KelTec P32, or a .22 in a similar sized package. The sights on the LCP are just little bumps on the slide (sights on the gen2 are much better). I routinely make hits at 15 yards into the head box of an IDPA target (sans laser), but it took work. Don’t let anyone convince you that it’s only a bad-breath distance gun. Gain competence, and you will gain confidence. The trigger, like most all tiny double action guns, isn’t great. But again, dry fire and meaningful range time will allow you to work around this.

In Closing

I have had T.U.G. in its current configuration for about a year. This gun gets a lot of carry and shooting time (about 30% of my range time). T.U.G. in addition to allowing me to be armed around the house, makes a great grocery run gun, dog walk gun, gym gun, jog gun, and a wonderful Non-Permissive Environment gun. I always carry as large a gun as I can, and sometimes that gun is T.U.G.

May we always shoot home invaders in the face.

Protect the Brood,

Defensive Daddy.

The Special Application .22LR for Home Defense, Part 2: The Setup

Part 1: https://growingupguns.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/the-special-application-22lr-for-home-defense-part-1-weigh-the-evidence-and-make-a-decision/

This will be a quick post about how I have the rifle set up.

The Rifle

The Ruger 10/22 takedown is the base gun. It came with a drilled and tapped receiver, and a weaver mount. If you don’t have a mount, any of these rails should work. Let your budget be your guide. Don’t forget the blue locktite. Dr. Sherman H. of Revolver Science uses a Nodak Spud rail w/ onboard peep sight. This one is cool because it creates a longer sight radius and because peep sights are the heat.

The AmmunitionIMG_4740

This is the single most important ‘accessory’ for any firearm. In a rimfire caliber, it’s even more so. The hit and miss ignition and feeding of rimfire .22 is known far and wide as a great reason to not trust a .22 with your life. Right Reddit? So what is a guy to do? Buy better ammunition, silly. As The Tactical Professor pointed out, smallbore rifle shooters are the group to look at for ammunition. They demand a high reliability rate since failures to ignite cost time and could cost them a match. So for now, I’ve used Federal Premium HV Match ammunition. I’ve had 200 rounds go ‘pew!‘ with absolutely zero malfunctions with this ammo. Can you say that you’ve fired 200 rounds of your chosen defensive ammo through your gun? If not, then your argument against my choice is built on shaky ground. The other brand that the cognoscenti likes is CCI. You want High Velocity (for penetration) and high quality. Don’t use the 550 round bricks for bad guys. Use that stuff to practice! As an aside, in whatever firearm you use, make sure you test your chosen ammo in your gun in the magazines you intend to use with it.

The Optic

Why an optic? I have been trying to get my wife used to iron sights on rifles for several years. My wife is blind as a bat without glasses (we keep an old pair of glasses rubber banded to the stock of the gun), is cross eye dominant, and can’t seem to build a good shoulder and cheek weld with the rifle. I have taught many people to shoulder a rifle, and for whatever reason, it’s not in her body mechanics. Her instinct is to try to see down the sights with her left eye when the rifle is shouldered on the right. I have fought this for 5 years to no avail. It’s a training and practice issue (which is why this project was started in the first place). The Red-dot is a Bushnell TRS-25 that I had living on a shotgun that wasn’t in use. Battery life is good enough for me to leave it on a 3 setting all the time, and change the battery every 6 months or so. I mounted it as far forward as I could to keep the dot smaller and hopefully buy a bit more precision.

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It’s rugged enough and works well enough for me to trust it in this application. I’d love to put an Aimpoint Micro H-1 on it and change the battery once a year, but that’s not in the diaper budget. Since the optic doesn’t have a quick disconnect mount on it, I am working an ‘optic failure’ drill into my wives program. This will involve using the optic as a large ghost ring, and require her to make hits on a 10 inch circle at 5 yards. It’s a really bad day if the battery is dead and you’re using the rifle in a defense situation, but once you plan for an emergency, it ceases to be an emergency.

Magazines

I bought several factory Ruger BX-25 magazines from CDNN for $20 a piece. They have proven totally reliable so far, though the rifle only has about 500 rounds down the pipe. For “GO” mags, I would only use these factory mags. An interesting note, the reason they hold 25 rounds is because that’s half of the usual box of 50 rounds of .22LR (tidbit from the Doc).

The Light and Mount

I mounted an old Nitecore single Lithium battery flashlight onto the barrel with a NEBO Long Gun Light Mount. The price was right. So far, it has proven sturdy enough for it’s purpose and would grip a variety of diameters of lights. I can index my pointer finger on the barrel band, and my thumb falls perfectly on the tail switch of the light.  If I were doing it super cheap, I’d use hose clamps (I had an AK set up like this for years). As long as you have a white light on your rifle, do whatever works.

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 Bonus Medical!

If you have a way to make holes in people, you should also be able to patch holes. Because I had real estate on the rifle, I decided to attach a (TK4) Tourniquet to the offside of the rifle stock. These TQ’s are great because they are so flat, are inexpensive, and can be applied one handed to yourself with a little practice. I wrapped Self-Adherent Bandage to secure it to the stock. This tape has held up pretty well for me when I have done this in the past. If it starts to fail, no big deal, I’ll replace it. Now we have on board medical in case we need to patch up a loved one. Like I’ve said before, get medical training if you haven’t. You’re more likely to save a life with that training than by saving the day in a mall shooting or whatever your super-hero gun fight looks like in your head.

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Future Addition

I’d like to get a snag free two point sling on the rifle. One that is out of the way, but can be used drap over the neck to get two hands free. I’m on the prowl for that.

That’s it. Feel free to comment, share, and subscribe.

Stay Safe and Protect the Brood!

Defensive Daddy
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