Looking At Your Home From An Intruders Point Of View

This rambling was originally posted on our Facebook page on October 10.  Once again it's been edited slightly but the basic ramble is still the same.


It's Friday once again, and that means it's time for another one of my rambles on the subject of self defense. Last weeks post covered several guns I personally like for home defense and some of the reasons why, but there's more to securing a home than just buying a gun. There's a wide variety of things you can do to make your house less of a target, and most of them aren't really all that difficult.

The easiest thing is to get an alarm installed by a good reliable company such as ADT, Honeywell, or LifeSHIELD. The last thing most crooks want is an actively monitored home where they know the cops are going to be called even if they manage to shut up the residents quickly. But that's hardly the only thing you can do.

Next on the list is to take a good look at the outside of your home. Is it well lit? Or could it use an extra spot light or 2 mounted at the corners of the house, preferably with motion detectors. Are there bushes hiding the bottoms of windows that an intruder can hide behind, or do you have rose bushes and holly bushes planted in front so to them make getting to your windows a prickly business? How about your back yard?  One of the hottest trends right now is to have privacy fences installed around your backyard, but if your neighbors can't see into your yard, how can they see a burglar trying to break in? How about high hedges that serve the same purpose? Again, this is something crooks love since it gives them a safe place to work while they're trying to get into your home. And how about the doors? Are they solid security doors with good quality deadlocks? Or flimsy hollow core doors that could be opened with a single kick.  Maybe you have older doors that are more window than door, these were especially popular in the late seventies and early eighties; but if they're still the original doors you might want to consider replacing them.  New doors are made with double and triple layers of glass that are both harder to break with out alerting everyone for 3 houses on either side, but also provide much better insulation as well which would have the added benefit of not only making your house more intruder proof but also cutting your heating and air conditioning bill.

Nor is that everything that might be thought of. Go ahead and look around. Try and see if you can come up with a couple of ways you could get into your house without being spotted by a nosy neighbor.  Better yet, call your local police department.  Many department are more than happy to send someone out to evaluate your home for potential threats or weak spots.  I'll bet you can come up with several ideas all on your own, and I invite you to post them here. Who knows, you might even come up with a couple I wouldn't have thought of.