Before we depart from the comfortable confines of the home, let me bring up a few of the things that I think are important in terms of your home and safety.
Some people feel like the solution to home security is to build veritable fortress. I would strongly caution against any heavy fortifying of your home. While bars on windows and doors might seem like a good idea at the time, there is a huge practical problem with them.
This is a good problem to examine in terms of priorities. At the the end of the day, my stuff is just stuff. There is no item in my house that justifies risking my life in a confrontation with a criminal. The only thing that justifies that risk is a direct threat to myself or my family. If a criminal wants to come in and take my stuff, he is more than welcome. I will be gathering my family and retreating out the nearest window. We can call 911 from a public place down the street and stay away until law enforcement clears the house. Our safety trumps any and all property concerns. Period.
Due to this order of priorities, I want a home that is designed more in terms of mobility than fortification. I want to be able to abandon it at the drop of a hat and have multiple options available to get us all to safety. Bars and heavily fortified doors blow that strategy to hell.
(In retrospect, I did not mention this in the first few posts because it seemed obvious, but in light of recent events in the news, I'm going to say it explicitly. The heart of my safety philosophy is the avoidance of violent conflict. If I am in a situation where I am even considering using violence to resolve a problem, it is extremely likely that I have failed in one or more of the areas that I will be discussing in these posts.)
This violence avoidance policy extends to all places, including a discussion of the home. A legal scholar will advise you that in the United States, your home is your castle and you've no duty to retreat. That is legally and conceptually correct. That said, if you stand your ground and chose to enter into a violent conflict to protect your stuff... you are an idiot. No matter how well-trained or well-armed you are, there is a risk of dramatic failure in any violent conflict. It is never, ever worth risking if you do not have to.
This "no fortress" discussion is just an articulation on this policy.
Of course, protection for humans is only a piece of the puzzle.
At no point and time will the merit of this "no bars" strategy be more apparent than when you are caught in a fire. Remember that "safety" encompasses just more than conflict with other human beings. Your thinking has to be multi-dimensional. You could make all the best safety decisions in terms of intruders, and some freak short-circuit could still set your house ablaze. Good smoke detectors are just as important in self-defense as flood lights or a devastating right hook. In the event your doors are blocked off, windows equal survival. If they happen to have bars on them, I don't think you'll be effectively employing your electric screw driver while the flames deprive you of all your oxygen.
If you really want to practice good "self-defense", spend some time seriously considering how you'd handle the various natural and man-made disasters that could afflict the area around your home.
In short, your home isn't a castle. It is just a place where you keep your stuff. Your stuff is not that important. Keep that in mind, and a lot of these bits of decision-making should take care of themselves.
