It's 4:45 a.m. on an early Monday morning. You hear a noise in your home. Are you prepared?
This is exactly what happened to a young father in Elmore County, Alabama.
According to sheriff Bill Franklin, the result was the criminal -- identified as Charles Virgil Bowne, 39, -- was shot four times by the homeowner. He described it like this:
"I got a young couple in their 20s; daddy, momma and a young child at home when daddy hears a commotion in the front of the house," Franklin said. "He arms himself with a 9 mm handgun and goes to investigate. He sees Mr. Bowne standing in the living room and Mr. Bowne tells him 'Give me you (stuff).' Mr. Bowne then makes a move like he's going into his front pocket and the homeowner fires several times."
The invader were shot once in the head, shoulder, bicep, and left leg. He was taken by helicopter to a Montgomery hospital with life-threatening wounds. It appears the homeowner responded with a 9 mm handgun.
Consider this to be a fairly common scenario you could face as a homeowner. It's dark, you are awoken from a dead sleep, and you confront an invader at especially close distances. From the news reports it appears that the dwelling of the homeowner is a sort of manufactured home which means the rooms are not especially large and there is serious concern of penetration of interior walls for the family.
The 9mm? It did the job of stopping the intruder. It would appear that the homeowner did his job in getting multiple hits on the invader after the attacker made a furtive move towards his front pocket. None of the reports I've seen describe the total shots fired to give us an idea of the heat to miss ratio.
We also don't know about the lighting situation that would allow the homeowner to identify the threat and shoot accurately in a low light situation. Considering we cannot choose when and where we might be attacked, it becomes more critical to have a choice about our equipment and our training. Do you have a method of lighting your target for a positive ID? Does your firearm have the ability to provide a sight picture under low light/no light scenarios?
Although hit four times, the invader still is breathing. You have to assume your handgun rounds are not going to be a definitive man-stopper (see Why we need to stop arguing about handgun calibers). You must train accordingly to get quick hits accurately on vital targets.