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TheReverend wrote:Thanks everyone for you interesting responses. I defenetly picked up a few good tips. Just out of curiosity, can you guys profile your area? I mean something like "bad part of town" , "hi end suburb" downtown Dallas", "out in the country" etc.
It'll be very interesting I think to compare the behavior to the area.

Suburban Grapevine. It's a very nice, quite neighborhood, low crime, and my street has very little traffic on it. It's only one block long, and while it is open at both ends, it is used almost exclusively by residents of my block who are trying to ingress/egress the neighborhood. In fact, in the 5 years that I've lived in this house, I don't recall a single crime anywhere in my neighborhood—unless you can count something low grade like a teenager smoking weed in his back yard or something.

johnson0317 wrote:What do you do if it is someone you do not mind being on the front step? How do you account for your strange posture, and your sudden need to rid yourself of a firearm? Just wondering? I will be the first to admit that I have a nasty habit of opening the door to people that I end up telling to shove off. I need a good in-between policy.

RJ

Everybody I know understands that they are about to enter the home of a certifiable gun nut. Strangely.....or not.....they usually seem to feel safer because of it. It depends on who's at the door as to whether I make any attempt to conceal the gun as I let them in. If there are children involved, the gun stays out of sight. If there are no kids and the visitor is one of my "gun buddies," I'll just holster the gun or set it aside as they come in, and there is no issue because they would do the same in their houses. If it is someone else, I'll either holster the gun concealed, or put it in a drawer before opening the door—retrieving it later. If the pistol is one of my smaller ones, I'll just pocket it.

Texas Dan Mosby wrote:

What do you do? How do you open the door?

I use the "patented" TDM WTFisknockingatmydangdoor approach: After a quick visual check to determine if I will even open the door, support hand opens the door, non-firing foot forward ready to act as a brace, body bladed in order to mask the drawn firearm being secured behind the trailing hip with the strong hand, ready to employ if needed. Between the bladed body and the partially opened door, nobody sees or notices the firearm.

You're patent must still be pending, because I've been using that method for a while, and I haven't heard from your lawyers yet.

Most of the time I'm home during the day, I have a pistol holstered anyway; so there is no need for me to pick one up from somewhere on my way to the door. For those WTFisknockingatmydangdoor moments after dark, I add that I am left handed, and my door hinges on the right (from the "inside the house" perspective). Also, my front door is one of those that has a 1 ft wide X 3 ft tall oval section of decorative glass right in the middle of it; so I have to be careful how I approach the door to begin with. If at all possible, I will approach it from enough of an angle that they can't see me, but I can "peek" around the angle enough to see them. This also puts me outside of any potential line of fire.

I realize that the glass is a security weakness, but I try to use that weakness to my advantage. In any case, I'm not looking for facial recognition. I'm looking for body/clothing recognition, since making their face visible to me would also make mine visible to them. If I dont' like what I see, I can always communicate verbally through the closed door. If I am reasonably reassured that things are OK, I will stand off to the left side of the door just a tad, open it enough to confirm things are OK, and my drawn pistol is held out of side behind my left hip. I am standing both offline relative to the door opening, and bladed away from whomever might enter. So even if a bad guy were to get past my initial inspection, he has to make a turn to his right to face me—a tactical disadvantage for most right handed people if you think about it because it places their weapon within my reach if they are armed with a drawn weapon. Also, I can retreat behind a modicum of cover if things go high and to the right right off the bat.

The corresponding illustration will show what I mean. The exterior entry way is actually deeper than portrayed in the diagram. The exterior walls on either side of it are brick.