A home invasion is not a burglary. Burglars want your stuff and they want you gone. A home invader picks the house because you’re in it. That one distinction should drive your whole plan.
I’m Lance Rankin, owner and gunsmith at Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas. Home defense questions come across my counter just about every week, and most folks start the conversation with “which gun should I buy?” That’s actually step three. Let’s take them in order.
Start with the doors, not the gun
Most forced entries come through a door, and most door frames fail at the strike plate. The fix costs a few dollars: swap the short screws in your strike plates for 3-inch screws that bite into the wall studs. A kicked door that holds buys you the seconds that matter.
Beyond that, the basics still work. A quality deadbolt on every exterior door, and actually locked. Motion lights where someone would approach in the dark. Visible cameras, because criminals prefer not to be on video. And a dog. I can’t put a spec sheet on a dog, but ask any burglar what they avoid and a loud dog is near the top of the list.
If your house looks like work, most predators move on to one that doesn’t.
Have a family plan before you need one
Nearly every family has a fire escape plan. Very few have a plan for someone coming through the front door at 2 a.m. Yours should cover three things:
A safe room. Pick a bedroom or closet with a solid-core door and a real deadbolt. That’s the fallback point where kids go and stay.
A phone that isn’t in your pocket. Keep an old cell phone charged in the safe room. Even without a service plan, it will still dial 911.
A rally point. If the family gets separated or has to get out, everyone should know where to meet.
Then walk through it once or twice a year, the same way you’d run a fire drill. It feels silly right up until it doesn’t.
Pick defense tools you’ll actually train with
I sell guns for a living, so take this with whatever grain of salt you like: a firearm is the great equalizer, but it’s not a magic wand. The right home defense gun is one that fits your hands, your household, and the amount of training you’ll honestly do.
For most people that’s a handgun or a carbine. I’ve written up my thinking on a home defense AR-15 setup and the best home defense handguns if you want specifics, plus a look at 9mm self-defense ammo, because what you load matters as much as what you shoot it from.
Two rules regardless of platform. First, staging: the gun has to be quickly accessible to you and locked away from everyone else, which is what quick-access safes are for. Know exactly where it is and whether you can reach it from wherever you spend your evenings. Second, training: the will to survive has to be backed by the skill to perform. Range time is part of the plan, not an extra.
The fight can start before you get home
The 2007 Cheshire, Connecticut home invasion started when the attackers spotted the victims at a grocery store and followed them home. Follow-home robberies work the same way today. The lesson is that awareness starts in the parking lot, not at your front door.
Simple habit: check your mirror before turning onto your street. If the same car has followed you through two turns, don’t pull into your garage. Drive somewhere lit and public, or straight to a police station. I cover more of this kind of thinking in my 360-degree awareness post.
Decide now, not then
Survival in a violent encounter is mostly mental. You have to settle the question ahead of time: if someone breaks into my home while my family is inside, I will do whatever it takes to stop them. People who hesitate on that question at 2 a.m. lose time they don’t have.
And know what comes after. If you ever do have to fire in self-defense, the minutes that follow matter enormously. Read my guide on what to do and not do immediately following a self-defense shooting before you ever need it.
If you’re in the Fort Worth area and want help putting together a home defense setup, that’s a conversation I have all the time. Email me at [email protected] or call the shop at 817-393-4000. We’ll figure out what fits your house, not just what’s popular this month.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
