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The strategy for dealing with a mob attacking your home, even if it only has 10 people in it, is much different than that for dealing with a burglar in your home. You can’t wait for the mob like you can the burglar. Instead, you need to attack hard and fast, dealing a decisive blow before they can do the same to you.
Figuring out the when and how to attack in a case like this is difficult. The law allows you to use deadly force in self-defense and in many states in the defense of your home. The problem with that is that it leaves the initiative in the hands of the bad guys. Between them having the initiative and them outnumbering you, things could look pretty bad.
You can’t wait until they break into your home. At the same time, you have to wait long enough for it to be obvious that their intent is to break into your home. In other words, you can’t sit there with a sniper rifle and pick them off down the street. Any court would see that as murder.
Basically, you have to stop them between the time they cross your property line and your front door. That doesn’t leave you a lot of time or a lot of room. So, you’ve got to be ready to hit them hard and fast, once there is no doubt that they are intending to attack your home. In other words, once they cross your property line with weapons in their hands.
The military strategy most appropriate in such a situation is the ambush. By definition an ambush is a prepared attack, where the enemy is allowed to enter into a kill zone and then is attacked by surprise. It is a brutal, violent attack, which puts all the advantage in the hands of the ambusher. In this case, it puts all the advantage in your hands.
Everything You Need To Know To Keep Your Home And Family Safe.
Since speed and violence are hallmarks of an ambush, you need as many shooters working together as you can get. Trying to ambush that mob by yourself isn’t going to be anywhere near as effective as three or four family members shooting together.
Preparing Your Home
So, the goal is that you need to prepare to ambush the mob between your property line and your front door. This will be much more effective if you fortify your front door to make it harder for them to break through. The extra time that it would take for them to break through your door could be just what you need to be able to succeed with your ambush. See a previous article on fortifying your front door here.
The next two things you need to determine go hand in hand. They are the firing positions for every member of your family and the location you want the enemy to be in when you ambush them. This location is known as the “fire sack” or the “kill zone.” Ideally, it should be about halfway between your property line and your front door, centered on your home.
Each family member that is going to participate in the ambush needs a prepared firing position. By prepared, I mean that it is someplace they can shoot from, that is somewhat protected. Never put all your family members together, but spread them out. If you are all together, it’s too easy to kill you all. By spreading out, you improve your chances of survival.
If you have a two-story home, use the upstairs windows as your firing positions. It is easier for you to shoot down into the mob than it is for them to shoot up at you. At the same time, one or two family members that can shoot from the first floor can watch to make sure that someone hasn’t crept up close to the house.
You have to assume that your attackers are going to be shooting back. Therefore, your firing positions must be as bullet-proof as possible. Brick will stop most handgun and shotgun rounds, but will not stop rifle rounds. However, a single thickness of sandbags will stop just about anything.
The other thing you need to do is to prepare your front yard to channel your attackers into the kill zone. While it is most likely that they will head for your front door, you don’t know what they are going to do. However, you can set up your landscaping to influence what they do and direct them to where you want them to be.
Let me tell you a little psychological trick here. When people are faced with a choice of two ways to go to get somewhere, most people will pick the one that is the easiest. So if you can give them an easy way to get where you want them to be, while making everything else difficult, they’ll go the way you want.
There are a number of ways of doing this, but the easiest, while not looking like a protective barrier, is to put a hedge of thorny bushes along your property line, with the exception of your front walkway. They will see that they have an easy access to your home and most likely use it, rather than jumping over the hedge or fighting their way through it. You can do the same thing to the front walkway, making it difficult to leave it and go towards the sides.
Preparing Your Family
Everyone who is going to participate in protecting your home needs to be prepared to do so. That means mentally prepared, as well as knowing how to use their weapons. The last thing you need is to have a family member in a shooting position that doesn’t know how to load their gun.
Training with firearms does several things. First of all, it increases skill. Since everyone will be nervous and adrenalin will be coursing through your veins, your shooting ability will be degraded. Even soldiers miss their shots in such a situation. The better everyone is at the mechanics of loading, aiming and firing, the better they will be able to do.
The other important thing that practice does is to give your family the necessary confidence to be ready to repel the attack. The combination of skills and practice in working together will make it much easier for everyone to know what to do and what everyone else is doing.
If you have members of the family who will not be shooting, train them to either reload weapons for family members who are actively shooting, or to be lookouts. An attack on the front of your house might be a feint to cover the real attack, which is aimed at your back door. Having a family member watching the back yard can spoil those plans for them, giving your family the advantage.
Final Thoughts
If you can take out the leaders of the mob, you will greatly increase the chance of the mob breaking up. This is an old military tactic, as well. Military snipers used to seek out the officers to kill, as doing so would disrupt command and control, demoralize the troops, create confusion and greatly increase the chances of the now leaderless troops running in fear.
Leaders are usually easy to spot. They will be the ones doing the most talking, be the most aggressive and be the ones telling others what to do. Many of the others will only be there because the leaders pressured them to be. They might want some of the spoil, but if there wasn’t anyone pushing them to be there, they wouldn’t.
Always keep control of your family. It is easy in the heat and confusion of battle to get carried away and keep shooting. Your only purpose is to break the attack. When your enemies turn tail, you no longer have legitimate reason to keep shooting. Stop shooting and let them run.
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