TACTICAL
Location, Location, Location
Where (and how) you keep your home-defense guns is just as important as what you keep.
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The name of the group was the "Circle of Dog Blood," and it was the reason I have given a great deal of thought to gun location in the home over the last few decades. It was the late 1980s, and occult crime was a new phenomenon. Since I was the only investigator who had been to an occult-crime training course, I got the call to respond to a German shepherd hanging from a tree, its blood drained.
I spoke with a large number of people in the small town where the crime scene was located. I learned a lot about what people had heard about the incident but little about what actually occurred. Unfortunately for me, those involved thought I was on to them, so they felt the need to warn me off, and the first warning was found by my wife.
One morning as she was running late, she ran out to her car, opened the door and quickly inserted the key to start the engine. She fired it up, put it into gear and looked up through the windshield only to notice that her view was blocked by a disemboweled cat that had been placed spread-eagle on the windshield. The next warning came in the version of a disemboweled cat nailed to the rear door of my home. It was at this point that I realized my home and family were under attack, and I needed to prepare.
I decided against wearing a gun on my person when I was in the house (though I did have one on me whenever I was outside, even if it was just to take out the trash), as my kids were quite young at the time and I did not want to scare them. Thus I decided that I needed to develop a system within my home to keep guns readily available for use without storing them in such a way that they would become a danger to my children and their friends who played there.
I began to think about my home life and what I normally did when I was there, and I decided to locate the guns in the areas that I frequented. The obvious locations were near the bed where I slept, the front and rear doors and the family room where my family spent most of their time. Why keep a gun in the formal dining room where I seldom went?
Late one evening, several weeks after the second cat was found, my wife and I were watching television (the kids were in bed) when we heard a knock on the front door. This was unusual because no one who knew us used the front door, and people who did use it rang the lighted door bell. I went to the door, but before opening it I reached inside the nearby hall closet and grabbed the loaded Smith & Wesson Model 60 that I had suspended above the door.
I flipped on the exterior light and cracked the door to the length of the chain while standing off the line of the door itself. I saw a young man and woman who told me their car had broken down, and they needed to use my phone. I told them I would call the police and to stand by. I quickly closed and locked the door and told my wife to call the local P.D. I moved to the window in the dark room and saw the couple run down the street, get into a car and drive away.
The seriousness of the situation was not lost on me, and I continued to bolster my residential security, which included locating guns in my home, and that led me to come up with a plan for having firearms in the places I believe make them safe but accessible when I need them to protect my family.
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