A Retired Military Intelligence Officer on Home Defense | Ed McAlister

What does a lifetime spent studying threats, intelligence, and force protection teach us about protecting our homes and families?

In this episode of Three Sips to Shots Fired: What Happens Before the Sirens, Lori Baxley sits down with Lt. Col. Edmund S. McAlister (Ret.), a retired U.S. Army Military Intelligence Officer, attorney, firearms instructor, and expert in tactical intelligence, counterintelligence, and force protection.

Drawing from decades of experience analyzing threats and preparing for uncertainty, Ed shares practical insights that every homeowner can apply—regardless of their background, training, or experience.

Together, Lori and Ed explore:

✅ What Military Intelligence teaches us about personal safety
 ✅ The mindset differences between awareness and fear
 ✅ How criminals identify vulnerable targets
 ✅ Home defense beyond firearms
 ✅ Situational awareness and environmental design
 ✅ Layers of security that buy time and create options
 ✅ Common mistakes homeowners make when planning for emergencies
 ✅ The role of preparation, training, and decision-making under stress
 ✅ Why mindset may be your most important home defense tool

This conversation goes far beyond locks, alarms, and weapons.

It is about developing the ability to recognize risk, think critically, and make sound decisions before a crisis unfolds.

At its core, home defense is not about paranoia.

It is about preparedness.

It is about protecting what matters most.

And it begins long before an intruder ever reaches your front door.

About Ed McAlister

Edmund S. McAlister is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army specializing in Military Intelligence, Tactical Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and Force Protection.

He holds a Juris Doctor from DePaul University College of Law and has extensive experience as a firearms instructor, security professional, and educator. Throughout his career, Ed has focused on helping individuals and organizations better understand threats, vulnerabilities, preparedness, and risk mitigation.

About Three Sips to Shots Fired

Hosted by Lori Baxley, Three Sips to Shots Fired: What Happens Before the Sirens examines the decisions, warning signs, habits, and human factors that shape outcomes before crisis occurs.

The podcast is built around the STARS Framework:

⭐ Scenarios – What can happen here?
⭐ Triggers – What feels slightly off?
⭐ Action – What will you do about it?
⭐ Routines – What habits protect what matters most?
⭐ Stoicism – Can you remain calm when life isn't?

Memorable Takeaway

"The best home defense plan isn't a piece of equipment. It's a prepared mind."

Subscribe for More Conversations About

✔ Home Defense
 ✔ Situational Awareness
 ✔ Military Intelligence
 ✔ Personal Safety
 ✔ Force Protection
 ✔ Preparedness
 ✔ Decision-Making Under Stress
 ✔ Leadership
 ✔ Vigilant Living
 ✔ The STARS Framework

#ThreeSipsToShotsFired #EdMcAlister #HomeDefense #MilitaryIntelligence #SituationalAwareness #PersonalSafety #Preparedness #ForceProtection #VigilantLiving #STARSFramework #WhatHappensBeforeTheSirens #LoriBaxley #SecurityMindset #ProtectWhatMattersMost #DecisionMakingUnderStress #Resilience

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we're joined by Edmund S. McAllister, Lieutenant Colonel Military Intelligence, U.S. Army retired, J. D. DePaul University College of Law, a retired military intelligence officer in the United States Army, specializing in tactical intelligence, counterintelligence, and force protection, an experienced firearm instructor and a practicing lawyer. As you can imagine, Ed brings a rare and well-rounded perspective to this conversation. He's served at a high level in military intelligence where understanding threats and making decisions under pressure is critical. And he's also spent years as a corporate litigator working on complex cases where decisions, risk, and consequences play out in very real ways. That combination gives him a unique lens, not on just what happens in the moment, but how those moments unfold over time, long after the initial decision and how to prepare for those risks that can happen. So Ed, welcome. Glad to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

I'm very glad to be here. Thank you, Lori. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this. I know that I want to say up front that I'm incredibly proud of you and proud of you doing this as a podcast. I think it's important for people to think about these things, to look at life and say, there's a little bit of risk out there. As a military intelligence officer, my job was to reduce risk for the commander. I would try and reduce uncertainty for a commander by understanding the enemy, understanding the tactics, understanding the terrain, understanding how these things all fit together. But something that's really important to remember and something that I used to tell commanders all the time, I can reduce uncertainty through planning, through careful evaluation, through all those, I can reduce uncertainty. But it's a Rhea stat that does not go to zero. Okay. I cannot I can't eliminate uncertainty. I can reduce it, I can't eliminate it. And the reason for that is because on the other side of the equation, you have a thinking enemy. You have a thinking threat actor who is out there actively looking for ways to hurt you. And so you can't predict all that. Eric von Molke, the famous German field marshal, once said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. And it's true. As soon as you you've got this wonderful plan, and as soon as somebody hits you in the mouth, as Mike Tyson used to say, the plan goes out the window. But it doesn't go completely out the window. And that leads to another quote from Dwight Eisenhower, which is plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable. So you have to think about your home defense as a plan, as something in the same way we used to do fire drills in school, right? And we all thought they were lame and we all walked down the stairs and then out into the recess and then count our noses and here we'd go. But had there been a fire, that's exactly what we would have done. In other words, these are just because it's it's simple doesn't make it stupid. And a lot of what we're talking about today, or what I'm talking about today anyway, has to do with common sense approaches to defending your home, to making your home more secure. Again, can't reduce that uncertainty to zero. Can't do it. But you can, in fact, take certain steps that will, I think, reduce uncertainty and help you be more secure in your in your possessions and effects, as the Constitution says. Some framing thoughts I'd like to give uh to sort of start things out. Planning is the operative term. You have to think this through. You have to have an idea of what it is you what you what it is you want to accomplish and have to have sort of considered the things that are out there. It has to be a layered plan. And by layered I mean, and I'll get into this a little more, but there are multiple layers to any defensive program, and those have to do with deterrence, with detection, with things of this nature that we'll get into. But it has to be layered and it has to be thought through.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

I like that layered concept. And a lot of civilians don't really consider the the idea or the concept of layered home defense.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

These things are nested, to use the army term, you know, we nest these things inside each other like those little uh Russian dolls. And it does have to be layered. You have to think about everything from the outer perimeter to the final sort of defensive spot. And that's the way to think of it as exterior to interior. You also have to communicate this plan. For me, I live it's my wife and I, it's just the two of us. It's very easy to communicate what it is I want to do and what what you know and get her input and talk back and forth. It's very easy for us to do because it's just the two of us. You got kids, might be more complicated. You know, where are the kids? How far away from you are they? You know, when the situation arises, are they downstairs while you're upstairs? These kinds of things just have to think about them. Again, no home defense plan, no plan of any kind is foolproof. They just aren't. There's again a thinking enemy out there who wants very much to get in and get your stuff or get you or do whatever it is that they're going to do that's that's nasty. But the failure to plan and the consequences of a failure to plan, I think are dramatic. People do dumb stuff under the theory that they're perfectly safe in their homes. And they're not necessarily perfectly safe in their homes, as we've seen. I mean, literally this month, or last month rather, uh, there was a home invasion in Winnetka, Illinois. And Winnetka is, for those who aren't familiar with the Chicago area, it's a very upscale, upscale neighborhood, gated communities, gated lawn, I mean gated estates, so to speak. I think the median house price there is two and a half million bucks. How did it happen? Well, the lady came home, she had left the gate open, somebody came to the door purporting you know with a an outback steakhouse bag saying, Here's your food. She opened the door. Five guys jumped out of the bushes.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

And in they came and beat everybody up and held them at gunpoint and robbed them and tried to get their safe and tried all this stuff. How did that happen? Okay, a little common sense wouldn't hurt. Did you order food? If you didn't order food, why are you opening the door to this person? Do you have a peephole that you can look out? Do you have a ring camera that you can talk through? There's no reason to have opened the door. There's no reason for the gate to have been open. Those are the kinds of things that that I think complacency will will lead to. In other words, if you are completely oblivious to threat, these are the kinds of things that can happen to you. And I'm not victim blaming at all. This poor family had, you know, they didn't deserve this by any stretch.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

How many people were in the zone?

SPEAKER_02 6:12

There were the wife and and uh three three kids, the oldest of which I think was fourteen or fifteen. And they got held at gunpoint and slapped around and this and that. And uh they've made seven arrests, which is good.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Seven.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Seven. Yeah. Apparently there were six people that came in the house and a driver. This is how it happens, right? The logic of that or the the the conclusion that I draw from that is that you have to have something of a tactical mindset. One of the things that I've seen uh in in sort of looking at the products essentially in terms of education that are out there and for home defense is that it's a lot of guys who have real life CQB, close quarters combat, close quarters battle experience. And these are, you know, the sleeve tattoos and they're Delta Force guys, and that ain't me, and it's not you, and it's not anybody that I know. Well, it's several people I know, but but it's not me. And I don't want my house to be a fortress. I don't need my house to be a fortress. I do need it to be secure. I need my my home to be secure. I want to protect my wife, protect my family, my little dog.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

And what you're saying makes me brings me to the typical home where you have children, and there's a lot of chaos that ensues because you're managing a big household. So you can easily get distracted. But like you said, if you have an intentional plan, you have a more of a likelihood to fall back to a good plan.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Well, yeah. And I will uh uh we'll get into some of this here in a minute, but one of the things that that this there's transitional times and transitional spaces within the home and within your routines. So when you come home from the grocery store, you park the car in the driveway, everybody piles out, everybody grabs a bag, goes in the house, the garage door is open, everybody's doing all this stuff. Pull into the garage, close the garage door first, right? A lot of these things happen in transitional spaces, and I get into it because there's some real world examples from from near where I live. And I live in a very nice neighborhood, a typical suburbia, you know, nice little lawns, everybody's doing fine. But we've had home invasions near us, uh within uh within a few miles. And we'll get into sort of how to think about that when you evaluate threat, right? Because what you have to do is you have to, first of all, have a tactical mindset, what I call a tactical mindset, what you can also just call it is being conscious, being conscious of the world around you and and what the threats are and that they that they exist. And I want to stress here that that a tactical mindset, in my view, what I'm referring to as a tactical mindset, is not paranoia. I'm not talking about being paranoid. Paranoia is driven by fear, emotion. It's a high stress, low information game. I'm scared of everybody and everything. That doesn't make any sense. I'm not scared of lots of stuff. And I'm preparation, tactical mindset is driven by training and logic. So it's high information and low stress. I've already considered these things. I don't have to stress about them in the moment quite as much. You're gonna stress. If something happens, you know as well as I do, you know better than I do that that the stress will be there, that that you're you'll get the adrenaline dump, it will be ugly. But if you've planned and prepared at least a little bit in advance, you have less of that. So sweat in training, you know, we used to say in the Army, sweat in training is less blood and combat, right? The more you sweat in training. So that's why we do that. And another thing that I think, I mean, just put it another way, does having a fire extinguisher in your house mean that you're irrationally scared of fire? No. I think it means you it's a common sense precaution against a known phenomenon, right? Fires happen. We have fire extinguishers in our homes for that reason. Um, and that's that's kind of where I'm coming from on this. I I want I don't want people to think that this is like you've got to, you know, immediately go out and buy triple strand concertina wire and play more mines at the perimeter and you know, set your machine guns up on a final protective fire. No, no. It's just gotta be common sense. And there really are wolves in the world. I mean, that's one of the things that I think I have I've had this conversation with dear friends of mine who don't think like I think, which is fine. I mean, you do you, right? But they no, come on, it'll never happen here. It it can't happen to me. There are lots of people who don't have a plan. Um, and and I think most people don't have much of a plan, in part because they just can't envision that that something bad might happen to them. The key to all of that is just be aware of your surroundings. I mean, honestly, that's the key to it all. Be aware of your surroundings, what should be there, what shouldn't be there. That awareness, that that that sense of looking around and understanding what's, you know, remember in Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. Two of these things are kind of the same. If I've got a uh a weird car on my street, I'm gonna notice him. Now, I might not have to, you know, uh respond to him, but I know he's there. And I will know he. I mean, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lose sight of that when I drive down the street. Oh, you're not supposed to be here. Who are you? And I'm gonna be careful about it. There's another Army Field Manual, uh, the survival manual, uh, had a great quote that I literally have it on my wall right here. All right. And it says, Two of the gravest dangers to survival are a desire for comfort and a passive outlook. You can't be passive about it. You just can't. Um That doesn't mean you again, that doesn't mean that you have to be paranoid. That doesn't mean you have to be sort of, you know, on edge all the time. It does mean that you have to be aware. And so that those are your those are some framing thoughts about how to how to do that, how to, how to approach this problem. There's a a guy called Colonel Jeff Cooper, who was uh really the father of of sort of modern handgunning. And I don't know, I mean, I don't know much about him other than he uh obviously taught a lot of people to shoot. But he had a color code system white, yellow, orange, and red. And those had to do with your tactical mindset, what your consciousness level is. And white is essentially oblivious. And I can give you an example of white right here, right now.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

You got guys walking around with their phones like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

True.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Absolutely oblivious to what's walking around them, oblivious to everything. That's a dangerous attitude to be in. That is a dangerous state to be in because then it can come up like that. You'll have no warning, you'll have no time to set yourself up. That's a danger. Yellow is relaxed but alert. And, you know, you can walk into a room and look around and okay, does everything look okay in here? What's off? Is anything off? Nothing's off. Okay, fine. I'm good. I know where the exits are, I know where my family is, I know I'm conscious. Orange is when you have a specific alert. Something here isn't right, and you're now focused on that potential threat. Okay, that guy's acting strange. And we've all seen it in various contexts. You're at a store or something, and somebody's just acting off, or you're, you know, some something's not right with this guy. Well, now I'm focused on you a little bit. I want to make sure that I understand where you are in relation to me and mine at all times. I you've become become an issue. And then red, of course, is action. That that particular threat actor has done something or said something or is in a position where you could get hurt and and you've got to focus on him. You're either gonna run, you're gonna attack, you're gonna do whatever you've got to do. Run, hide, defend, whatever, whatever it happens to be. That's red. I think your default position in honesty should be a yellow. Be aware. I walk into a room, okay. These are people I don't know. Are they okay? Yeah, they seem okay. Good. But I'm aware, I'm conscious. I don't uh I don't take it for granted that that they're gonna be there. I mean, another way of looking at it is is that General Mattis from the Marine Corps uh had this concept of left of bang. So you have bang, this moment of uh chaos, this moment of sort of eruption, if you will. What came before that? What were the things that led up to that? If you can recognize those signals to the left of that explosive moment, you can take action to avoid it, you can take action to respond to it, you can take action to hide from it. So that idea of left of bang, what are some of the indicators? We're pre-attack indicators. And I've there's been a series of really unfortunate videos that I've seen where somebody's walking down the street and two young Tufts walk by them and slug them for no reason.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Typically somebody my age happened here recently in Chicago where somebody got pushed onto the train tracks for God's sake by a lunatic. Well, what were some of the if you look at those videos and you you parse them out and really think about them, you can see some indicators. They st the two guys start to separate a little bit. They start doing things, they they're they're they're not acting right. And the guy walking along, the old guy, he's just head down moving. He's in white mindset. He was in white mindset. And you can't be in white mindset. You have to say, okay, there's two dudes walking toward me that I don't now they're acting a little funny.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Transition pretty good. You have to be observant, be ready to make that transition.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah, you really do. You really do. And and that's left a bang, right? That's left a bang. I've seen an indicator. These guys suddenly separated and they're sort of acting like like they're having an expansive conversation. But what they're really doing is gearing up to tee off on you. And you know, part of that is making yourself look like a harder target.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

And the way to do that is not, you know, body armor and a walk around looking like a spaceman or a navy SEAL. Basically, act like you know, walk with purpose, go where you're going, head up, on a swivel. People understand that you're you're conscious because people are looking for weaknesses. People are looking for weaknesses.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

What are some of the factors or the considerations that to avoid a situation like that?

SPEAKER_02 15:32

If I understand your question right, me walking down the street and being aware, I see that, I move across the street, I give a wide berth, I am aware, and I'm looking at them so that they know I'm aware of them. That alone will deter a lot of people. The idea is to waylay you, to get you completely unaware and sucker punched. Now you're on the ground, you get kicked two or three times, and they run off. I guess that the concept is be aware and be ready to avoid, be ready to respond in some way. For me, there's I have different ways I would probably respond to something like that, uh, depending also on whether my, you know, if my wife is walking with me as well. I mean, what am I doing? I'm pushing her over this way, we're we're both moving the hell out of the way, we're not doing this, I'm not having this. But you have to be aware that those indicators exist and what they might be. Uh you know, this tactical mindset thing, it matters a lot, and it matters because time is not your friend. Time is not your friend in these situations. Average burglary takes about eight, twelve minutes to get done. Entry into a home under 60 seconds, and this is FBI statistics, I'm not making it up. Carjacking, 15 to 20 seconds is the average. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

It happens so fast, and then there's a million things going on within those seconds.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Those seconds, those seconds are interminable, as you know well. But it doesn't take long for things to go south. The absolute goal is to avoid that, to be stay left of bang. Avoid bang altogether, keep that yellow mindset until you until it becomes orange or red. In other words, jumping back to the example of the man who got uh punched on the street, as soon as I see those two guys, they're orange to me. Okay. I'm I'm now orange. I I don't like the look of that. And I when I see them separating like that, they're starting to move toward red. Uh because I I don't like that behavior. And I notice that it's anomalous. It's not the same, you know. Again, one of these things is not like the others. This thing is looking different than it should. And if you trust your gut, and if you if you're an observant person, you can pick up those cues. You can find, you can see them, you can see those cues. And we talked about how much time it takes to burglarize a home, to uh to make entry into a home, these kinds of things. At the same time, remember that here in Chicago, for example, which is where I am, the average response time for 911 in a life-threatening emergency at priority one, the average is eight to twelve minutes for police response. That means there's probably a bunch above that and a bunch below that, but it also means, wow, how long is eight minutes? Somebody sit there and just sit at you sit at your desk and look at your watch and let eight or twelve minutes go by and imagine all the things that might happen in that time space. There's a guy called John Correa who has various podcasts and and a website. I like him, but I don't I don't know him and he doesn't know me. But he said something I liked, which was that awareness buys you time and time buys you options. And I think that that's an important concept if the listeners get nothing else out of our talk today. Remember that. Awareness buys you time. Time buys you options. If I was aware of those two guys walking down the street early, I have the option to cross the street. I have the option to do something else. I have the option to reach for my, you know, trusty dusty can of uh mace. I mean, whatever it is, I have an option at that point. If it comes on you like that, you don't have the options. You don't have the time. Opening the door to a stranger, you've ceded your time. And that time is what makes a lot of difference. A great way to put it. You're sacrificing your options when you when you cede time. Um, time is time is critical. We'll we'll talk about planning here in a little bit and sort of a military framework for it that I think works fairly well in a civilian context, but time is a factor. I mean, it's it's one of the one of the key factors we think about in developing an initial plan. And I get it. I live in this world, I've been a civilian for a while, at least technically. And there's lots of obstacles to having a good solid mindset about defense and about being conscious, being aware. One of them is we have a normalcy bias. We have a bias toward things being normal. Yeah. This is just the way things are. So that your brain wants to tell you this it's probably nothing. I was just a that the you know, that was just a a car backfire.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Whatever. We don't want to think these bad thoughts, and we feel kind of silly doing it. But a good defensive mindset requires you to acknowledge that there is the possibility of danger immediately, rather than waiting and and wasting seconds that that count for a lot, those seconds, to rationalize it away. One of the things that I I once said, and my my son told me I ought to write it down, so I did, but is this is a quote from me, which is that denial is a survival strategy that has long outlived its usefulness.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

I like that one.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

You can deny all you want, it ain't gonna help. Um and and it's it's it's a way, it's a good way to get yourself hurt. But you can't deny that there are wolves out there. There just are. And you can either be a good sheepdog in your own home or you can be a lamb in your own home. And another famous quote, not quite so famous, but you know, lion will lie down with the lambs, but only if you keep adding fresh lambs every now and again. So let's talk about, now that I've now that I've sort of scared the heck out of everybody about the parade of horribles that that exists in the world, let's talk about some principles of of defending your home. First of all, is threat assessment. We'll go through each of these a little bit. But first of all, is an assessment. Where are we? What is the threat? What are my what do I look like right now? What what do I have to work with? What do I what can I do? And then the layers of defense that we talked about. And those layers are deterrence, detection, delay, and defend. Okay. And those aren't necessarily original to me. A lot of people frame them slightly differently, but they're they're they're but they're pretty constant across, I think, most people who have given this serious thought. That's important to sort of know that there are layers there, right? That it starts essentially in the exterior and moves toward the interior. In other words, we're not defending at the perimeter. I don't need, you know, somebody was talking to me about why didn't I have a long-range rifle? And I said, because if you're that far away, you're not a threat to me. I don't have any need to shoot you at some great distance. I just don't. And if you're that far away, I can get away. I got time. Um and a big part of this is to avoid having to have uh avoid having to confront any of this in the first place, obviously. We can also talk a little bit about some of the tactical considerations you might want to think about and and and what kind of home defense tools and and self defense tools you might want to think about as we go on. But let's talk about MET T, M E T T. That's uh That's something you may be familiar with as a former Army officer, but it's mission, enemy, troops, terrain, and time available.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Those are the five planning considerations. Met T, mission, enemy, troops, terrain, time available. Now, in a in a military context, you know, I have a mission. I have to go, I have to go from here to there to do this.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Here, the mission is very simple. I have to defend my home. Okay. Writ large, that's your mission. Okay. Now we got to think about what's the enemy? What's the threat? And there's lots of good sources of information out there. You can go on, right now, I can go on, I can't remember the name of the site, uh, patch, some kind of patch, I think it's called. Here there's an Orland Park patch, and it'll have a crime mount.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

It'll have it'll have a crime mount. What's going on? Where is it? We talked earlier about home invasions. One of the things that happens near near us, if you were to look at our our little suburb, we're probably eight, ten miles north of the interstate. But those suburbs spread down almost to the east-west interstate corridor, and then they spread east to the north-south corridor. And what what I discovered in looking at it is that there was a series of home invasions and have been a series of home invasions within about two or three miles of that interstate corridor. Why? It's an escape route. And what they do, what they were doing was driving around the neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon. You're out there mowing the yard, garage doors up, isn't it? Kids are running in and out of the house. You're in white mode. And what they would do is drive around. Oh, that looks interesting. Pulled into the driveway, to the garage. I mean, the garage door's open. Yeah. Now you're in, now you're in my kitchen, right? Now you're in my kitchen. That's not someplace I want you to be. And this happened a lot. Uh and then as soon as they're done, back on the interstate and off into the great big city of Chicago, which is several millions of people and very difficult to, you know, the navigation of finding somebody in there becomes problematic.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

I think it's important that people follow those apps that tell you what's going on in your area. You and you'll get alerts if you want.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

There are criminals out there, and they will target you if you let them. And I'm not paranoid at all. I just take certain precautions based on what I know to be going on around me, and that buys me time. Again, it buys me time.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

And then you have options.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

And then you have options. In the military context, the next next first T is troops, what troops are available. And in this context, what that means is who's in your house? For me, it's it's my wife and I, and that's it. So I have to know what she knows. I have to know where she is, what she thinks her response is going to be. We have to have talked about that. If you have little kids, what's the rule? Okay. If something bad happens, where do they go? Do they know to go run straight to your room, straight to their room? Where do you want them to go? And kids are, of course, a big variable in this for those younger than me. Mercifully, my childhood has survived to adulthood. It was touch and go there for a while, whether I would pinch his head off. In any event, what are the kids supposed to do? What are the son supposed to do? I can recall probably my son was probably, I think, 18, senior in high school. He had the day off. I was on my way to the train to go downtown to my office, and and suddenly there was a train delay, and they they had this sort of mechanical voice up there that says, Your train is 15 minutes late due to, and then it would say, mechanical difficulty. And this time it said police activity. Okay. I said, What'd that mean? So I, you know, everybody's out of getting and I'm on the phone. What police activity? And it turned out that down at the far end of the terminus of this line, there was a family that owned several 7-Elevens. And, you know, somebody did a home invasion because they assumed that these people would have a lot of cash at home. And then they had run off and they were hiding in the rail yard. Okay. That's not that's not good. It took them a while. They found they found them whatever, bottom line. But I called my son immediately at home. I said, son, get the shotgun, make sure that it's got uh make sure that it's charged up, and I don't want you more than about six feet from your mother until I call you back. You know, that's it. We're not I'm not having it. I'm not gonna be a victim to that.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Not if I have awareness, right? Right. If you're aware of it, why would you let yourself go down that road? Of course I'm gonna have my son. And my son was like Roger out, pop.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Um how old was he at the time?

SPEAKER_02 26:12

About 18.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Okay, he was ready.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

And and he was he was competent with the firearm, knew what he was about. Uh, he'd been trained, very responsible young man uh in that context anyway. So he was a lunatic otherwise, but I love the guy. Uh rain is the next T. And in the military, of course, that actually refers to physical hills, nails, battles, news of approach, these kinds of things. In a home context, how do you get into your house? How does somebody get into your house? What are the entry points? Where are the vulnerabilities in this thing? It isn't it's not hard to do that out. It's not hard to look at look at your layout, look at your your situation, and understand these are the vulnerabilities, these are the points at which I I need to do something to either protect myself better or to uh uh ameliorate the risk in some way. And then the last T is time. How much time you got? And I will give you a hint, Lori, it's never enough. It's never enough time.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Good point.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

It's less than you think, and it's less than you want.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Abraham Lincoln once said that if you give him six hours to chop down a tree, he'll spend the first four sharpening the axe. And there's something to that. Prepare. Just prepare. And it doesn't have to be this elaborate, uh, again, triple strand concertina, you know, I've got machine guns on the perimeter and this. No, it doesn't have to be that. My home is very inviting. Come on in if you're invited. Um, and if you're not, might not be a good idea to kick in that door. You know, it just might not. Uh it won't go well for you, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Yeah. And the step about terrain, um, I have a question about that when you have your.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

So the terrain being your your home and it can expand out to your neighborhood, the suburb, suburban environment, or wherever you are. But what are your thoughts about um certain ways to protect your windows and your sliders? And like what do you think about even a wooden dowel or what are what are the technologies that you find that are effective?

SPEAKER_02 28:16

I have a wooden I have a wooden dowel in my sliding glass door, but it's also a double pane, very difficult to break kind of a window. There are coatings for your windows that you can use. You should use four-inch reinforced screws in your uh in in your hinges. Big, deep, heavy reinforced screws in your hinges. Things of that nature are fabulous. And they they buy time.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Yeah. I can barely.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Anything can be breached. Anything can be breached at some point. I mean, if if you add enough force, brute force and ignorance counts for a lot. But yeah, there are plenty of things like that that are that are very cheap, very easy fixes, and very effective. Very effective. Having there's coates for your windows that make them difficult to break or that make them difficult, you know, they don't shatter in a way that allows somebody to enter right away.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And they're budget friendly?

SPEAKER_02 29:00

They're budget friendly. They're they're they're just not much. Let's talk briefly about assessment, okay? How to assess this stuff. And I I think that that may that'll lead in, I think, to some of the other questions that you have. Some of the things that you need to look at. What are the crime statistics for your area as we've discussed? What goes on in your area? What are the threats? Has it changed? Does it change? You know, we used to have virtually no armed robberies in my little suburban world. And now we do. And where do they happen? They happen at transitional spaces, they happen at ATM machines, specifically drive-up ATM machines. You're in your car, you're all like this, you gotta reach out the window, you gotta do this. Never, it's never right. The thing's never at the right height. You're reaching out, you're all discombobulated. And that's when somebody comes up transitional space. Okay, you're in between things. You're not driving and you're not parked, you're doing something.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

And that's that transition that we talked about. Those are always ripe. Physical location of your home and neighborhood, right? You know, if you live in suburbs that are closer into a city, for example, is that different from living further out? What are the physical characteristics of your area? How close are the first responders? How close are you, as we discussed before with the interstates, how close are you to escape routes? If you map this out in Chicago, you can see that it's closer in suburbs and it's suburbs that are closer to escape routes that suffer home invasions far more than others. Yeah, and and and mercifully, you know, I I hope they get here quick, but I I don't have time to wait for them. I mean, and and then you also think about this in a in a different context. Let's say, for example, that you're in Callaway County, Kentucky, or Graves County, Kentucky, where my dad's from. There are 30 deputies for 800 square miles, or actually 30 total employees for the Graves County Sheriff's Department.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

Okay, and that includes the guys who who manage the jail and so forth. They're not getting there. They're not going to get there in time. They're just not. There aren't enough of them. You know, that that's a that's worth thinking about. How close are the cops? You know, if you live if you live out in rural Colorado or whatever, I'm quite sure that there's a those counties are big. I don't know how many, how many sheriffs they have, but they're they can't be everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Yeah. And in the city, what are the response times? Because in the past several years, it's been very slow because of the underfunded force. Now it's getting back up there. But paying attention to that, maybe would be a not a thing to consider.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

It's something to just keep in your mind. Uh and and what that does is it it sort of reinforces the idea that you really are you have to take your own agency and your own responsibility for your home, for what's yours in terms of your family and your loved ones and so forth. The cavalry will not arrive in time. It's really not going to happen, even if they got here in three minutes. Well, okay. Again, sit there with your watch and count out three minutes and imagine all the things that can happen to you within that time frame. It's a lot. And that's sort of where I'm coming from on these things. Just as a disclaimer, I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. And I'm not giving legal advice here by any means. But yeah, I mean, it's it's incredibly important, I think, for people to sort of have a sense of what's out there. How does this, how does it, how does crime play out in our area? How does, you know, how do how do what other threats might I face? I mean, here in the Midwest, we worry about tornadoes, and everybody knows that when a tornado siren goes off, you hit the basement. Okay, what's in the basement? I better have some water down there.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

At a minimum, right? Maybe some tools, whatever. Other things you've got to consider, what's the street lighting situation? How close are your neighbors to you? And what are who are they? You know, used to laugh and say that the the Italian home security system when I lived in Italy was all the nanas on the deck. They're out on the balcony watching the whole neighborhood like hawks. And they'd tell you if something was going on. What's the condition of your home? Are you in good shape? Are you, you know, what kind of repairs do you need to do? What kind of repairs would be nice to do? The age, the condition, the readiness of the people in the home. Mercifully, my wife has a pretty decent tactical mindset. She's competent. She wants, you know, she she knows what she's doing, but she doesn't like it. I don't like it one bit. She would like very much to, you know, live on cloud, you know, on a cloud, but we don't. And she knows it and she's aware. And she, you know, if she sees something, she says something. My son was that way as well, but it's not that way in every home.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

And especially when there's kids involved, sometimes it's, you know, it's something to consider. So there's four basic levels of home defense, the layers, as we've talked about. The first is to deter. What you want to do there is make a criminal decide that you're not worth it. That looks too much like work because there's a default position for criminals just as there is for anybody else, which is I'll do the easy stuff, but if it looks hard, I don't know if I want to go. The second is to detect, which again provides early warning and time. The second is delay. In other words, now we're talking about the four-inch screws, we're talking about those kinds of things that make it harder for somebody to breach the perimeter, so to speak, and get in. And finally, there's, you know, it's time to defend, uh, to actually confront the problem. It's important to stress that these layers are overlapping and they're interrelated. So for example, ring cameras, $100 investment. Cheap. You can do it tomorrow and have an app. Get the one with the app so that you can see on your phone. You don't have to wait until it's downloaded. Three weeks later, we're doing an autopsy on what happened to your house. Get the one with the app. They're cheap. Exterior cameras both deter because people see them and they say, I don't want to be on TV. And and they detect, right? So that you see how they overlap that way. Dogs, bless dogs' hearts. Even little wimpy dogs like mine, Francis. Francis wouldn't bite you if you paid him to. I mean, you just slather yourself in bacon and and you wouldn't get bit. But he does bark. He does bark, and that's early warning. Postman comes by, apparently, that's the biggest threat in Francis' life, and he must warn us about it urgently. That also can be a deterrent for somebody who's scared of dogs, right? If you had a decent sized dog and that dog would bark in his buns off, you might think twice about coming in that house because you don't want to get bit.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

You see how they overlap in that way. Well, let's talk about deterrence a little bit. Criminals look for the path of least resistance just like everybody else does. You want your home to be something of a hard target. Again, I don't mean sandbags and you know, whatever, but easy stuff. Lighting. Are you well lit in the front? Your landscaping. Keep it so that there's not a lot of places for people to hide out in the bushes. If you looked at that house that I was talking about earlier in Winnetka, it's beautiful property. Oh my God. It really is a gorgeous home. And it's got trees and bushes and shrubs, and there's five or six feet of place that you could hide right next to that porch. And that's exactly what they did. I'm for lower bushes. I have nice landscaping here, we do. My wife works on it incessantly. Um and it and it's beautiful. But it's also, I've got there's about a five or six foot perimeter around the house where you can't hide really. Uh and and that's a deterrent, okay? I can't sneak up to your house and just be there lurking. That would be difficult for someone. And I think that's important to think about. Keep the shrubs trimmed, that kind of thing. Signage. If you got a professional alarm system, maybe you should put it out there. Beware of dog if you have a dog. What I would caution people against is fake signage.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Really?

SPEAKER_02 36:18

I think that I think that's stupid and I think it not my thing. You've got alarm system company, and you don't have an alarm. Don't do that. Beware of the dog, and there's no dog. Or the worst. I think it gives a false sense of security, and I I just think it's uh I I just i i I it's difficult for me to even describe. But I just don't like it. The other thing I really don't like um is you know this yard protected by Smith and Wesson.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Oh yeah. It's antagonizing.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Number one, don't antagonize. Number two, don't advertise the fact that you have a firearm in the house, because frankly, that's a very lucrative thing to steal. No. Just no. And quite frankly, if you get into a self-defense situation, and again, I'm not giving legal advice, but a self-defense situation means that somebody has charged you with a crime, right? In other words, the the law of self-defense posits that you've been charged with a crime and self-defense is a legal excuse. If you're the kind of guy that has, you know, protected by Smith and Wesson, you know, I'll shoot you if you walk in the door, kind of thing, that prosecutor is going to use that against you. And he's gonna say, this guy was asking for it. He really wanted, he was hoping he'd get a chance to shoot somebody. Man, I'll tell you right now, I ain't got any interest in this world in shooting anybody. Thank you. No. Will I? Kick in the door and find out. No, you don't want that. That's just it sends the wrong signal. It just sends the wrong signal and and it should not be done. A firearm is a very dangerous tool. So is a toy, so is a table saw. So is, you know, so are are you know, lots of things. And if you don't know what you're doing with them, or if you're not committed to being competent with them, you really just you can create more problems for yourself than you than you had in the first place. The point being, there are lots of ways to to skin that cat in terms of firearms for self-defense and home defense. Do I recommend that? I do if you're willing to if you're willing to commit. I I recommend firearms for your home if you're willing to commit. But if you're not, then I then I don't, honestly. I've had people who come to me for training of various kinds and they got a gun. Now they feel safe. I'm safe. Right. When's the last time you shot it? A year ago. I got when I when I bought it. Do you know how to do you know how to clean it? Do you know how to do you know what types of ammunition you ought to be thinking about? Do you know any of those things? Can you hit a broadside of a barn at seven yards? And if the answer is no, then I have no interest. You're a danger to yourself and others at that point. You have to you have to take those things very seriously. And I I think people who don't um are not doing them so it's a false sense of security. Um and I I feel pretty strongly about it, as you may have gathered.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

I agree. You gotta be committed to maintaining it and it's not just cleaning it and you gotta make sure it's functioning properly at the range, especially like in my case, I had that situation where it had only been six months and I had repaired it, I replaced the magazine, but I hadn't yet gone to the range to make sure it worked. And I was letting Delphi pulled a million directions and didn't focus on that.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Well, I mean, if you look just as an example, my lovely bride, who I've, you know, we've been married nearly 40 years, and she's a former army officer, as am I, and she understands firearms, she don't like them. Okay. This is not recreational for her. I like to go to the range, I have fun. To me, it's it's a zen thing. I'm in the moment, I have to be in the moment because and then I all the other stuff goes away. It's it's like golf or anything else. I mean, you it's my wife refers to it sometimes as loud golf. Um, because that's how I view it. I mean, I have fun doing it. It's it's something I enjoy. She doesn't enjoy it. She, you know, it's loud, it's you know, a little smelly. I mean, she's not that comfortable with it. But what she will do once a quarter, once a quarter, she will go down and and essentially qualify with the firearm, okay, her firearm, so that she's competent with it and she's comfortable where she knows where it is, how it works. She's comfortable that it works and works well, and she can hit things with it. That's enough. Nobody's asking you to be Annie Oakley, nobody's asking you to be that guy on, you know, Hickok 45 here, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, and he's hitting with a you know, hitting 50 yard targets with a pistol. I can't do that. I'm I'm a good shot. I'm I can't do that, but I don't need to. I need to be competent. I need to be good at what I do and comfortable that I can manipulate the firearm safely, store it safely, all those kinds of things. And if you're not willing to commit to that, don't get a gun.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Just don't do it. I'm telling you right now, you're gonna wind up shooting somebody else. Oh, you didn't mean to shoot if you're incompetent with it. Again, you don't have to be an expert. You don't have to be one of those uh competitive shooter types. But if you're not conversant, really conversant, I just that's me.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah, makes sense. It's important. You've got to take it seriously. It's a deadly weapon.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

It's a deadly weapon and it's designed to be one. And you know, that that's a mindset thing as well, right? I mean, I I have to know that if someone were to break into my home, God forbid, I'm prepared to do what I have to do to defend my family. And I I'm competent enough with it that I can pull that off.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Let's talk about detecting things, which is the another layer to this. Again, you've got to remember the centrality of time. Detection buys you time. Time buys you options. How do you buy time? Well, motion detectors uh at points of access. Things like visible cameras, and again, that is Ben diagrammed with detection and deterrence. Ring type doorbell, like I said, $100, you can have one tomorrow. Uh, you know, hit Amazon, you're there.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

It's worth it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Keypad gate or some kind of RFID gate, if you have that, if you're if that's what your property looks like. And uh I I will tell you uh here's uh a detection device that probably costs you $30 on the front end, cost you a lot more than that over time, and it'll cost you a heartache in the end. A dog.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

A dog. As I said, my dog is absolutely convinced that the mailman is here to kill us all. That's why the mailman exists, and I must alert the family to it every time. I don't. That's fine with me.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

That's fine with me. Let me know.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

Because even a dog that won't bite you will in fact bark and tell you that something's happening. Yeah. That's a detection device. Alarm system with lights and sirens and all that. I I like those. I think that that's useful. I'm less convinced about the, you know, the call center that immediately picks up the phone and calls the police for you.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Well, there's another four minutes to your eight to twelve, right? Seems to me that having a phone on your person, which we all do now, and the ability to call 911 is enough. If the alarm goes off, call the cops. So those are some things to think about in terms of defense, of detection. In terms of delay, again, time. This is what's called a fabian strategy from a Roman general. And a Fabian strategy refers to not fighting the fight, but delaying, keeping, keeping the enemy off balance, but delaying, delaying, delaying to preserve, to preserve your own force. So again, doors. Uh solid core doors are a must, especially, you know, in the exterior parts of your home. If you ever uh go to a go to a hotel and feel how heavy those doors are, yeah. Those are solid doors, and they're solid for a reason. Partly it's fire, fire retardant, but also you can't kick that thing in.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah, and there are lessons and stories like that. Like our front door would have been kicked in instantly had it not been reinforced. The people kicking in the door actually broke the child on the floor. That's how hard they had to kick. And had it been easier, I never would have made it upstairs to the gun.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Apparently was set up pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

It was a solid home. Of course, you know, my father was a military officer and he made sure poor girls.

SPEAKER_02 44:09

Yeah. Yeah, he he was protecting the home. Of course he was. There's a theme that's been running through everything I've talked about so far, and I'm gonna and I'm gonna say it again because I can't help myself. Time.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Time. Delay. Time by time. If you hadn't had that much delay, you wouldn't have been able to make it upstairs. Okay. Think about how these things happen so quickly. They they they can be very sudden. An extra minute, an extra 30 seconds may be enough for you to do something to affect the outcome in a way that doesn't end in tragedy. One of the other things that that I would say is lock, lock the car when it's in the driveway. Close the garage door is an entrance to your home. Keep it shut. One of the things that has happened uh once or twice around here that I've heard of is thieves come up in the night, bash in the door to the to the car in the in the driveway or the window, and hit the garage door button.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Okay. I didn't think of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Yeah, I keep the clicker in the in the glove box or on you know the console thing so it's not visible. It's simple, easy stuff that you can do. Again, just buys you some time.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Recognize that if somebody's really determined, really determined, they're gonna get in.

unknown 45:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Aren't there some crime rings that have technology that can trigger a garage door to go up?

SPEAKER_02 45:25

Or I'm not sure if that's myth or I don't know that I think that that used to be more of a threat, but I think now in the digital age, that thing is generating random codes every time you every time you push the button and coordinating with the with the sensors. So I don't know that that's quite as big a threat as it once was.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

That's good.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

Where you had a fixed code. You know, yours was a fixed code to your transmitter and your button were one thing. Now I think they randomly generate code and it's different.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

But it's still worth worth considering. I mean worth thinking about. One other thing, just and this is a complete aside, if you do own a firearm, don't store it in your damn car. Just don't do it. Bring it in at night. Don't be an idiot. I was listening to some Florida sheriff who was talking about something like 60% of the gun theft in his county was from parked cars.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

Really, just don't do it.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

For one thing, it's not doing you any good in there.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

And for another, it's an invitation for somebody to steal it. And if somebody steals your gun, you got a problem. You've got a problem. In Illinois, you have, I think, 24 or 48 hours to report the theft of a firearm. And and that ain't happening to me. It's just not going to happen. The final layer of defense essentially is to defend. And that's where you you think about what do you have to do now? There are steps to that. I think it's important to remember that the only objective of defending in this context is literally the safety of the residents, right? The safety of the people in the home. What you're not doing generally is clearing your house. And I've I've seen guys who talk about home defense, talk about, okay, now I've got the flashlight and I'm going downstairs and I'm clearing room to room to room to room. Like hell, I'm not doing that. If you're in the if you're down there and I'm up here, have at it, boys. Have at it. I've already called the law.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Yeah. You'd rather have the What's that? Let the law clear the house.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Let the law clear the house. That's their job. I'm not, I don't want to do room clearing. There are people who can do that, you know, wonderfully competent guys who can do that. I'm competent enough. I bet I could, but I don't want to do it. Doesn't make any sense for me to go down there and cork trouble. I'm up in I'm up in my safe space. And if you come up here, we got another issue to talk about, and there won't be much talking. But at the same time, I'm not going to go offensively room to room to room to clear the house. I'm just not going to do it. It doesn't make sense to me to expose yourself in that way.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

And to leave, leave whatever sanctuary you have. The steps are to evade, right? The first thing you want to do is evade. And that means going up to a room, going somewhere, a strong pointing perhaps, but stay away from the trouble. Again, I'm not clearing the house because I don't want to I don't want to go walk into the trouble. You have to arm yourself with whatever it is that you got, whether that's a baseball bat, some bear spray, uh pepper spray type stuff, whatever it is, you have to arm yourself at that point and be prepared to defend yourself. You should barricade yourself. You should have a room in the house that everybody knows if if this happens, go here. In our case, it's the master bedroom because I've got a heavy bureau there that I can put in front of the door as soon as I as soon as we're both in it, I can move that bureau in front of the door and make it more difficult for somebody to get in. And I have the tools I need in there, including a phone, because the next thing you have to do is contact help. Get on the phone with 911 right away. I have heard various ways to deal with that phenomenon of calling 911, one of which is stay on the line with her. Uh the other is put it on a speaker and throw it on the bed. Hey, I'm I got things to do and I need both my hands to do them. Honestly, is my preferred technique. She can hear me, I can hear her, or him, or whoever it is on the 911 uh call. But I don't see a lot of need in having the phone up to my ear when I've got things I want to do, you know, tools I want to assemble and whatever it is. I think that that is I just think you can you can do it without holding it in your hand. What is the room that you're gonna use? Is it your master bedroom like mine? It might not be. It might be some other room. Some houses in cities and and and sort of higher end things have safe rooms and this sort of thing. I don't have one. I would find it wretched excess. But you know, if that's an option for you, then go for it. The space that you choose ought to be defensible, which is to say it ought ought to have limited access points. It ought to be a room that you can communicate from. I mean, I don't have any problem with cell service around here ever. But some people would. In the in the country, there might be parts of your structure, parts of your home that are are less less good for sales service. That's worth knowing. Does everybody in the house know where to go? You know, that's important too. As you know these things commonly happen at night. What if the kids are asleep in their room? What are what are their instructions?

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

And their instructions in my case would be get under the bed and stay there until I come and get you, or until a policeman comes. If you hear something bad and you know, you know it's going down, get under the bed, stay there till the police come, or until dad gets you, mom, whatever. But everybody needs to know that. And they need to they need to understand that that's the rule. It's not a guideline, it's a rule. What happens? Bang, noise in the night. Kids come out of the room. What's happening? No. Get under the get away.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

So I wonder if people are afraid to have instructions for their kids about that because they're afraid they're instilling fear or they might overreact. But you can I guess like you said, you can relate it to the fire drills in the school. They they pretend we're at school, you know you have drills there. We gotta have drills at home too. Maybe that's a way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 50:39

I think that I think that that's a rational approach. I think that, you know, nowadays you have active shooter drills at school.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Yeah. Yeah, I'm believable.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Unbelievable and sad and unnecessary in a lot of respects. But okay, that's it. Right? This is life. It it's unfortunate that we're at this point. Uh but I would rather I would rather have that happen and and and you know, have my son feel like, oh man, this is creepy. Dad's this is creepy. I'd rather have him uh do that and survive the situation because he knew what to do, uh, than the than the alternative, which is unthinkable. So I think it's you know, as a parent, we have a responsibility to provide our kids with information in the sips and nibbles, so to speak, that they can handle it at particular ages, right? And when we don't have that discussion all at once, build and you know, and as they mature, we build into what they need to be thinking about, you know. But if there were a fire in your home, what would you do? Does your kid know what to do if there's a fire?

SPEAKER_00 51:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Okay. I mean, we have fire drills at school, we have fire drills at home. Um, and this is just part of that. In terms of tools for self-defense, again, I think it's a completely separate conversation at some level. But again, I want to stress that you should assess what weapons you have and what weapons you're competent with. Where are those weapons staged? In other words, do you have a weapon downstairs, one upstairs, whatever? Where's your ammunition? How is it staged? Are you do you have, for example, in a pistol, do you have loaded magazines next to where you keep your pistol? And if you don't, you should. That kind of thing. We talked about shotguns briefly, and I think that they can be very effective. I also think that they require a certain level of skill in their use. People think that a shotgun is a point and click weapon. It's not. It's something and it has a hell of a kick. So for smaller framed people, and that'd be a be an ideal choice. Anyone that wants to talk to me about that separately, I'm happy to do it.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

Well, hopefully I haven't screwed the pooch too badly. I'm enjoying myself a lot. From a legal perspective, and again, I'm not offering legal advice to anyone ever. I am not your lawyer. You have not paid me. It's your responsibility to know what the law is in your area, right? In your state, your jurisdiction, what are the laws of self-defense and home defense? It's beyond the scope of our talk, I think, to really get into the implications of that. But you have to know it. As a responsible person, you need to understand those things. Virtually every state, well, every state allows some su allows self-defense in appropriate circumstances, but what those circumstances are, you need to understand. And you need to understand things like proportionality and things like uh, you know, those kinds of things. Now, generally speaking, if somebody has kicked in your door, you're you're likely going to be on a solid footing.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

But you should know what the law is.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

So in a good concealed carry class would probably give you information about law in your state.

SPEAKER_02 53:33

Aaron Powell A good concealed carry class should in fact give you uh a a fair amount of what the law is in your state. Most of the concealed carry classes that I've I've seen and and participated in have a a rather large block on the self-defense laws in your jurisdiction and also storage requirements or anything else that that that happens to be out there. And that's worth worth it. It's just worth knowing. I think a couple of things. First of all, you're never going to plan for everything. No plan survives contact with the enemy. It's always a thinking enemy. We can't reduce that re-estapped to zero. It just never happens. You need to adjust your plans. If you have a plan, you can adjust your plan. If you have no plan, you have no plan. Remember, you're not planning to win in this context. You're playing not to lose. Okay. What am I doing here? What's the purpose of this? My purpose is not to win the fight. My purpose is not to lose the fight. My purpose is to protect my beautiful wife. Um, you know, but it's not to go out there and smite the enemies and drive my enemies before me and hear the wailing and lamentations of their women. No, that's not what I'm up to here. I think that that's an important kind of roadmap to keep in your mind. And there are certain professions and things and people that where you can you can adjust fire on this plan, so to speak. For example, real estate agents. Real estate agents face some you they face some unique challenges and and they need to be thinking about them. One of the things that that to the extent you can avoid it, don't go visit, don't meet somebody on off-site for a first meeting. Meet them in the office if you can help it. Check, you know, check your gut. What does this person the vibe here? When you're showing a home, let them go to the basement first. Let them lead. Let them lead. What's that?

SPEAKER_00 55:12

I don't know if I'd even go down there with them. I'd just say, you can check it out and let me know.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Well, there's that. I mean, and that's actually a very rational response. Nothing wrong with that at all. Nothing telling you you've got to go in the basement. You've seen basements before, but have them lead be in front of you. In terms of self-defense tools, I think one of the things that I would definitely look at if I was a realtor, uh, if I were a realtor, I would understand completely whether or not I can carry pepper spray. And I would, if I if that's legal in your jurisdiction, then I would absolutely carry pepper spray. I would also make sure that before I went to show a house or went somewhere with someone I don't know, everybody knows where I'm going.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

Everybody knows roughly how long it's going to take me, and so on. Um, you know, if for no other reason than to reclaim the body. Uh but but unfortunately that's the reality. People need to know where you are and they need to understand uh, you know, what the what the thing is. If if it's at all possible to do it with two people with you, two realtors or you know, a realtor and a realtor's assistant, that's that's ideal. That's better. I recognize that that's unrealistic in a lot of cases. One of the things that I have told uh my next door neighbor is a fabulous was he's moved, but he's a fabulous realtor and and dear friend. And one of the things he was talking to me about that very item, and I and I said, here's something I I suggest. You pull up, first of all, don't park in the driveway where you can get blocked in.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:33

Park on the street and do a 10-second assessment of what you're looking at here. Is this a house I even want to go in? Is this person giving me any kind of sketchy vibes at all? 10 seconds. Look around you. What's out of place? One of these things is not like the others. Two of these things are kind of the same. You know, it's simple, but you know, you learn a lot in kindergarten, as it turns out. Take your awareness of your surroundings and your situation needs to be heightened if you're in a if you're in a profession like real estate, like home inspections, like anything else, where you're out by yourself in a in a in an unfamiliar environment. It's important for you to keep that awareness up.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

Yeah, and I appreciate you bringing it up because we do work with a lot of realtors ourselves and uh in our business. And we we're concerned because we hear the stories of things that happen and they have the open home open house days where they're in that house, may just be one person coming through during that hour. You know, and who is that person? And so a lot of what you're talking about speaks to how they could actually even layer their defense or have a plan in place. So I really appreciate that for them.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

No, I I think that that's the key is have that plan in place. Have an idea that okay, I know where the exits are, I have access to a defensive tool of some sort if if that's appropriate and legal. People know where I am. Somebody they can check up on me if they need to, those kinds of things. And and tag teaming, one of the things that uh again, my neighbor, he was the the broker owner of his agency. And one of the things he did, if they had an open house, they would have a realtor sitting in there, and again, you don't know who's coming in. They're not vetted, they just wander in the door, and God knows who they could be. He would have somebody from his office about every hour or two just drive by and check up on them.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

Just go walk in, say, how you doing? Do you need anything or how are you, you know, whatever. But every hour or two, he'd have somebody go over and and and make physical contact with the uh with the broker or or the realtor that was in the house. And I think that that's smart. I think that that uh first of all, it's good leadership. But in the second place, I I think it it makes sense that that again, buying some time.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

But anyway, that's pretty much my presentation, young lady. I don't know if I've hopefully I've hit the target for you.

SPEAKER_00 58:46

Thank you so much. Oh, I'm absolutely happy to do that. And you took something that can be complex or overwhelming for people. They're busy with their lives and they don't realize it needs to be a part of their life and that it can be without being paranoid or causing fear.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

You don't need to have sleeve tattoos or great big beards or anything like that. You don't have to be Mr. Tough Guy. You just you just have to be conscious. Remember that that that you're in in many significant ways what you're doing is buying time.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

And that's that's the best right there. So I thank you for everything and coming on, and it's been wonderful getting to know you and from your perspective, you know. You don't a lot of times that uh do I hear people talking about personal safety from your unique perspective. So that's really valued and I I really appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

It's been my pleasure, Lori. It really has. And thank you so much for having me.