Verbally Challenging Someone In Your House

One of the stereotypes of a watchman or sentry is the challenge: "Hark! Who goes there?" It would probably elicit guffaws if you were to use that type of challenge today. But it has the important purpose of trying to ascertain whether that "bump in the night" is friend or foe.

    As I noted in a post back in June, there are different opinions on how sure you need to be in identifying your target when responding to the "bump in the night," with some trainers contending that you should not give your position away by using a light or verbal challenge. The problem I see with this approach is the risk of an accident. Especially the possibility of shooting someone that has a right to be there, but was simply not expected to be there.

    The Tactical Professor related a case of this in a September 4 article in which a woman accidentally shot her own daughter. In that instance, according to news reports:

Police said the mother was alone in the bedroom when she heard noises from inside the house. The mother became startled as she was not expecting anyone to come over. The mother said she then saw someone running into the bedroom, at which point she fired her .38 special handgun, hitting her daughter once.

Fortunately, her daughter was not killed. That is not always the case. Back in July, I noted a news report of a man who fatally shot his wife because he was awoken by her walking around and thought she was a burglar (there had been an attempted burglary earlier that same day).

    The Tactical Professor writes:

As I mention in my book Serious Mistakes Gunowners Make, any ‘bump in the night,’ or in this case “commotion inside the house,” carries with it a set of competing probabilities. It could be an intruder, which is the assumption most people make when they hear it, or it could be a member of their household. The member of the household is the most likely scenario. Why is this true? Simply because they live in the same house as you do and they are not constantly updating you on their location. Where teenagers, such as the unfortunate shootee in this incident, are present, the chances of them leaving the house and returning without informing their parents is extremely high. This fact has to be figured into the home defense plan of any parent or adult in the household.

He recommends learning and practicing to verbalizing a challenge, even if something as simple as "who's there?" I think that something more should be said to carry the seriousness of the situation in case you have a teen or child who is playing a trick and wants to jump out of a closet to scare you. I would probably add something like "I have a gun," or "I'm calling the police." And use a light if its dark.