I don't know why I thought this, but you seemed a little old to be staying in a dorm...are you still kicking around in college?

Certainly would be the safest place on campus.

With a shotgn within 20 yards, it rarely takes more than 1 round!

I would have shot him, with a handgun, at least twice. Even the 1911 is not 100% reliable 100% of the time. Neither is a shotgun. You NEVER fire and look to see the results. You continue firing until you are sure the threat has been removed. If you walk past the shootee to another part of the house to clear, check on family or in response to other intruders, put one in the bad guys head on the way by. NEVER leave anyone alive behind you.

20 yards is a long shot in a house. that is 60 feet. The pattern from an improved cylinder choke in an 18" barrel with OO Buck at 7 yards is about 5 inches. At that range you can miss. At 60' pellets can spread, hit doorways and non vital areas of the bad guy. Even if the BG sustains a fatal would he may continue to go on about his business, the business of trying to kill you. Shoot > once. Ammo is cheap, life is expensive.

Thanks. Some good stuff in there. Don't forget never to look from the same elevation around the corner. Vary the elevation.
The things in your post are some of the things I have been trained and have trained others, to do. Clearing a house, or any building, can be a hair raising experience.

Knowledge is more lethal , one must have that first , or you just become a murderer .

Truly excellent point. I am proud of this kid for protecting his family. But situations like this one call for quick judgment, and the wrong choice could result in catastrophe.

Amen brother.

I am not a fan of hands on unless there is no other option. The degree of training required for effective hand to hand is quite high. The first rule of a gun fight is to bring enough gun.

Yeah, I have spent a couple of weeks on a few occasions in Phoenix. But I spent about six months in Tucson around 1982 - I thought it was paradise! Large enough to have plenty of things to do yet small enough that crime and overcrowding were not yet significant problems. 25 years later, and it seems like an entirely different, and far less friendly, city.

You were in Tucson just before the gang crap started there. Six months, huh? Sixteen years for me.

Yeah, that is the impression I got - that violence and drugs started rotting the social infrastructure of the city. The downtown area was already dead...but the University District was a blast, there were great places to eat ahd drink, lots of parks, etc. I would have moved there in 82, but I still had three years of law school left, and by the time I came back it was simply a different place.

Indeed.

Good post.