Guys, this racking the slide, slamming a bolt home on a semi, rubber bullets chit has got to go, if you're alone, job one is staying alive, if your wife, kids, grandkids are in the residence, job one is keeping them alive, ANYTHING that has breached your home doesn't even need to be able to hear you release the safety.
^^^This. Dad found out the shotgun by my bed was always hot, round chambered, and asked me why. Said chamber empty was safer, and the intruder gets the warning of hearing that slide rack. I said, “Exactly”. If one breaks into my home, the last thing they will get is a warning. The first thing they will see is a disorienting and momentary blast of light, and if they are a threat, the immediate result will be muzzle blast. The only thing that may prevent that follow up is if the light identifies one as less than a mortal threat, such as a disoriented person from meds or similar, or being a member of the family or a friend. The latter group all knows better than to break in, and the former group would be assessed on a pretty harsh scale. But things happen, and I am willing to take that half a second to identify what I am fixing to snatch the life out of.
Years ago, as a young man, I was renting a room from a lady I worked with, and I usually left for work at around 5 am. So one morning in particular, I walk out the door, and as I turn to lock it behind me, I hear someone rack a slide on a shotgun in the dark. The sound came from the driveway around the corner of the house. That gets your attention.
About two seconds later, I am looking at a guy standing there in the light of my Surefire, across the sights of my Glock, and he is blinded and hearing some yahoo screaming at him to drop the weapon. Which he does immediately. About this time, I notice he is all geared up in camo, and my brain realizes it’s turkey season. Turns out he is the landlady’s son in law, coming to turkey hunt on her place. She never mentioned it to me.
Both of us were a bit frazzled after that, but he was pretty understanding about the whole thing, and the landlady was apologetic about it. All of us were simply glad that nobody got hurt or killed. It cemented in my mind early on the importance of a proper light being properly employed with a weapon, as well as the requirement to identify the target prior to opening fire. There are a million things that can happen, many of them may seem like a threat, but turn out to be something else entirely. The slim chance of being killed by taking a moment to identify your target in such situations is far less of a concern to me than living life having taken the life of someone who was no threat to me.
