Home Safety

>>18442243
>So what should I go for? A gun? A knife? Sword?

Get a handgun or shotgun. Knives and swords are child's play.

>One other thing - I'm in my room upstairs most of the time and can't see what's going on in the house. Would it be totally ridiculous of me to install a security camera down there so I could know what's coming?

No if security cameras make you feel safer, then do it. If you have the cash do what you need to feel safer in your own home.

If you get a gun you'll need to train with it so you're not a danger to yourself or others and can actually hit what you're aiming at. It's an expensive and time consuming prospect, but a lot of people enjoy it. Frankly if you're worried I'd say get better locks and keep a bat in your room.

>>18442259

I actually have shot a lot of guns in the past. I'm comfortable around them, although I would say there's the slight concern that something happens while I'm groggy and I hop out of bed with my gun and it happens to be my roommate.

>Frankly if you're worried I'd say get better locks and keep a bat in your room.

I have two sliding glass door windows that are really more of my concern. One big rock goes through there, and who needs locks?

>>18442243
pistol.

bladed weapons are shit indoors because of space constraints on your swing as well as the time taken to swing being a disadvantage. I have a 9 mm with sig sauer home defense rounds in it designed to cause massive trauma but not go through to the next apartment.

a shotgun is always nice, but do yourself a favor, keep it unracked, and not next to the door. firstly the sound of racking it will dissuade most. secondly, if you have it by the front door and someone breaks in, depending on the layout of your house you just gave them a weapon to use because your front door is obviously not in your office or bedroom and you will not be able to reach it. you said downstairs so just like my place, you would have just given them a shotgun to use against you. this is where the statistic of owners having their own weapons used against them likely comes from. an ar-15 is also a useful defense weapon as it has a high capacity, use hog hunting rounds that are designed to expand. the downside of this is that any ar-15 round will penetrate multiple walls so you run the risk of collateral damage. you could look into frangible rounds but really, pistol with home defense rounds or a shotgun is your best option.

on pistols, consider a .22 actually. more rounds available to you, less flash and noise to disorient you in the middle of the night. say you miss your first shot as an attacker enters your room, you just temporarily blinded yourself and deafened yourself with any caliber 9mm and up that isn't silenced (and that's a pain in the ass process). meanwhile that attacker is what like 10 steps away, 5 if he sprints at you? now you're disoriented and in a hand to hand struggle after you just woke up. .22 doesn't give you those problems. low recoil for fast follow up shots, small flash, low noise, you retain tactical capability.

for shotguns, anything works. you point it in the general direction of the problem and pull the trigger twice, no more problem

>>18442333
that said, your home defense starts with the house itself. if you feel you're likely to get broken in to, get some security film for your windows, get better locks, and ensure that all doors and windows are installed correctly. honestly, unless someone is specifically targeting you your first goal is to make your house the most difficult on the block to break into so they go elsewhere. there's some really cool security stuff on the market right now that can also help you turn your home into a smart home.

Better locks first, because if you had a gun you're so jumpy that you'd have likely shot your roommate.

I'm an advocate for home defense, but you have to calm down and learn techniques to quell your panic quickly. Can't shoot either if you're trembling.

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Get a shotgun or revolver
Easy/quick to load
No safety
More so with revolvers but a very small chance of a feeding malfunction or jam (revolvers dont feed)
Shotguns are dirt cheap, ammo is very cheap, and the sound of someone pumping a shotgun is sure to scare off anyone who could hear it (unless they are retarded)

A revolver won't jam if you half assed take care of it, ammo is a bit expensive (i use .357 @$0.50 a bullet but there is always 22lr (like a BB gun but WAY stronger) and 9mm revolvers out there) all you have to do is pop the cylender, fill it up, and go.
Buy earplugs though, TRUST ME! The last thing you want is to fire a round with no ear protection unless it's 22lr.

I use a Ruger GP100 in .357 and my Mossberg 500 as home protection. Anyone comes at me with a gun or a knife is going to regret it! Though, .357 is coming out first!

>>18442347
From point blank range you have to drunk and paniced to miss!

>>18442243
>Would it be totally ridiculous of me to install a security camera down there so I could know what's coming?
I missed this question when I was giving you my long answer.

I've installed security systems as part of my business before, I would say it depends on what you want. you can go with a simple camera to monitor setup that just shows you real time what's going on, or you can get a dvr to save footage as well. if you want to run the cable so that it's not visible you can be looking at a decent amount of money for fishing it, fixing drywall that needed to be cut, repainting, etc. if you want to get to that level, it's worth it to go with a full install rather than one camera. also, a camera that is inside might seem useful, but if they're already inside it's not really doing you a lot of favors except distracting you for crucial seconds that you should be spending picking up your home defense solution of choice. you want the cameras outside on a system that alerts you if there's a problem.

contact your local security company, they're almost always running deals to compete with each other, and they can get you set up with a system that fits your needs and budget.

>>18442381
these days they have wireless ip cameras so he'd only have to run the power cable and they also have PoE(Power over Ethernet) cameras that handle both data transfer and power over a single ethernet cable. $250 for the 2TB NVR with an 8 port PoE switch inside, $80-100 for each 4 megapixel camera, and a 1000ft spool of cat5e is around $130-150. some wire fishing tools for about $50.

Everyone's pretty much said it all, but what about getting a dog?

>>18442392
Way too expensive for upkeep and time investment is also very heavy.

>>18442333

Any gun or weapon I'd get would stay exclusively in my room. Honestly, if I got burglarized, I wouldn't be all that worried, I'm more freaked about some kind of serial killer ending up in my home. (When I was a kid, the neighbor's house down the street got their door kicked in and a man tied them all up and was saying how he was gonna kill them before something spooked him and he left, so I guess I got a complex.)

A shotgun seems like my best option here.

>>18442381
I was really just thinking of maybe one camera that I install over a wifi connection or something. Enough to know that if I hear a big noise late at night, I can see it's just my roommate drunkenly reheating a pizza or something, and not someone running up the stairs to my room at full speed.

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Get a katana
Teleport behind intruders

>>18442392

I actually had a dog in the house until a couple of months ago when my other roommate moved out. She was an awesome deterrent and made me feel comfortable, since I knew she'd bark at an intruder but wouldn't bark at someone dropping a plate.

But I'd feel bad leaving a dog at home all day while I work. I also like to vacation a lot and wouldn't want to leave it in a kennel every couple of months.

>>18442392
dogs are awesome, but I've almost never had a dog that someone got to be a guard dog act like a guard dog with me. I might be an outlier but my experience tells me that someone that dogs seem to love, like me, could take your dog for a walk, come back, make a sandwich, eat the sandwich, then take your valuables, and then when they left the dog would wait for them to come back. it could just be me and the weird thing where dogs love me, but I would not trust home defense to a dog.

also, if you have a gun as a home defense tool, you know need to watch out for the dog. so you need to train in quick target acquisition and threat identification so you don't shoot your own dog on movement alone in a home defense situation.

>>18442404
My neighbors used to put up "dog on property/beware of dog" signs in their house/yard as a deterrent. They didn't have dogs. Never had issues but that was also in a safe neighborhood.

>>18442418
>you know need to watch out for the dog
now*

>>18442421

I just think that's too easy to debunk pretty quickly, especially in the suburbs where you have a limited backyard size. You can knock on the front door or look into the backyard and determine pretty quickly if someone has a threatening dog.

Like the other poster said, very few dogs actually act aggressive enough to be a deterrent, too. I'd need a much larger dog to freak someone out. Having a Shiba Inu isn't gonna stop anyone who is coming in here with enough malice to do me physical harm.