Excaliber wrote:
a good practice run and an opportunity for after action review to see if anything could have been done better - e.g., moving wife and kids into a locked room while he investigated. (I don't know the layout of his house so I don't know if this would have been feasible or not - it's just an example).
Excaliber, thanks so much for the encouragement
My own personal review is that I maybe should have gone around a different corner to check the problem. Had it been a real home invasion, I might have given my position away too quickly and drawn a violent/aggressive action from the intruders too quickly for me to counter. I led with my muzzle around a corner clearly visible to someone if they were standing in the open door way. There is a second opening from kitchen into dining room that would have put me at a 45-degree angle from the open front door and behind the large dining table and multiple chairs, providing better cover for me and more element of surprise.
Also sending the wife and kids anywhere was a non-starter because
a) it happened too quick. Despite the partial wall between kitchen and front door, the total distance is less than 30 feet.
b) any "escape" or "evasion" route for them from kitchen table to any other part of the house puts them in direct line of sight of the front door. When entering front door of my one-story home you can see clear down the entry way past the kitchen through the living room to the back door. If you're at front door looking in, dining room is to immediate left with a partial wall dividing it from kitchen. All bedrooms and garage are to the right. So any evasive manuever from kitchen to back door, garage, or bedrooms requires crossing this sight path that runs from front to back door. They were better off staying put and immediately hitting the floor if they heard gun shots (need to remind my wife to just take the kids, high chairs and all, immediately to the floor in such a situation - don't waste time trying to unstrap them - just turn chair over side ways and rest it on the floor with kids still strapped in)
EDITED TO ADD: I'm home today with my sick daughter, who is napping on my office floor (her 3-year-old separtion anxiety mixed with the flu, makes me feel IMPORTANT
) ... anyway, sitting here on the computer and whipped up a quick-n-dirty floorplan sketch in photoshop to go along with above description (since we're all learning from this, right?
)
- grey line/arrow is route I took with gun drawn; dotted line arrow is my 20/20 hindsight better alternative route
