Over the past few weeks in the general area where I live, home invasions have again become popular. This time, the (already in custody) suspects are four individuals, each armed with a shotgun. They burst into a house, regardless of whether the house is occupied or not, and then threaten the occupants and steal whatever property they can carry with them. In our theoretical situation, the four attackers come into the house, at which time the defender performs a lightning-fast draw and shoots one attacker – I am guessing twice, since the people who argue for this defensive method also believe that two shots from a handgun will virtually always stop an attacker. I say "virtually" because these shooters train to fire twice and then stop and see what happened. Strange.

Next, for our defender to win, the other three attackers must stand in place, doing nothing, while the defender shoots each of them twice. First, the defender’s handgun better either have eight cartridges in it, or the attackers must also be willing to wait for the defender to reload and then continue shooting. Personally, I tend to doubt that any of these things are particularly likely to occur. What will occur is our defender taking multiple rounds from several shotguns. At least with our defender dead, he or she won’t have to worry about the giant mess on the carpeting.

Multiple attackers are the reality of today. Expect it. Get out of the line of fire. It is impossible to defend anything if you are dead. So, do not get shot, which means move (or be in a position of cover, though few houses have any kind of barriers that will stop small arms fire). Unless you are Doc Holiday, you are not going to outdraw bullets. Move, then be shooting and shoot a lot. Your shots are protecting you and whoever else is in your care in the house. Within a home, some people rely on shotguns for defense and they are a fine and often a terminal choice, but have some spare ammunition available as you will need to be feeding shells into the shotgun since most shotguns do not hold a lot of rounds. Keep the spare ammo in a pouch or bag, not on the gun where it will just make an already heavy firearm even heavier. If you’re using your primary carry handgun, hopefully you chose one that is either high capacity (holds a lot of cartridges) or you’ve done a lot of practice with reloading – and ideally both. While many choose a 1911 semi-automatic firing a 45 ACP cartridge because of its legendary stopping ability, it is quite possible that the bad guys haven’t heard that they are supposed to instantly fall down when hit by a 45, so expect to keep firing.

Move to keep from getting shot - note how many times I have said to move, it is just that important. Then, shoot back. Really shoot, meaning just pour bullets into the garbage that was trying to kill you a moment ago. During practice, I usually use three or four targets and the first target (which is the one I pick as the closest or most-threatening “bad guy”) will often get five or six shots into it within two steps away from where I started. That’s what I mean about using ammunition. As Gabe Suarez says, “Shoot them to the ground.” Good advice.