Mission Drives the Gear Train - Home Defense Carbine

[vmi-mo]

How would parents have a defensive carbine ready to go quickly whilst ensuring it is secured from small hands?

This is an incredibley uneducated opinion given my lack of rug rats, but maybe keep it high off the ground???? Unless your kid is a climber.


PJ

[LittleLebowski]

She isn't. Yet. Right now, I'm good with the Belgian Malinois and a Glock with light. Definitely food for thought here.

[derekb]

How would parents have a defensive carbine ready to go quickly whilst ensuring it is secured from small hands?

Could this be a matter of the rifle being (more) secured during the day, only coming out to its more accessible location once the house beds down?

[MechEng]

This is an incredibley uneducated opinion given my lack of rug rats, but maybe keep it high off the ground???? Unless your kid is a climber.


PJ

Currently it's just my wife and I but we do have friends and family that occasionally visit with little ones. I use two vinyl coated bicycle hooks, installed inside our bedroom closet above the door, to hang a loaded shotgun or carbine.

None of our visiting children are climbers yet. When they do reach that point, or my wife and I have kids, I'll accept the reality that I now need to lock up my carbine. What ever method I choose to secure it, I'll just have to rehearse deploying it.

One method I've though about is to arm yourself quickly with your loaded handgun first, then retrieve you carbine. Use one of those quick access lock boxes and practice opening it in the dark.

[David Armstrong]

I prefer chamber empty and safety off instead of chamber empty and safety on for storage, but other than that looks like a good list. Interesting to see many returning to the 20 round mag for HD, as I've preferred the 20 to the 30-round all along with the AR15/M16 family. Nowadays I use an M1 carbine as the house gun and use 15 round mags in it.

[vmi-mo]

I prefer chamber empty and safety off instead of chamber empty and safety on for storage, but other than that looks like a good list. Interesting to see many returning to the 20 round mag for HD, as I've preferred the 20 to the 30-round all along with the AR15/M16 family. Nowadays I use an M1 carbine as the house gun and use 15 round mags in it.

What is your reasoning for safety off/chamber empty vs. safety on?

Also, why the M1 carbine?



PJ

[Jay Cunningham]

I prefer chamber empty and safety off instead of chamber empty and safety on for storage, but other than that looks like a good list. Interesting to see many returning to the 20 round mag for HD, as I've preferred the 20 to the 30-round all along with the AR15/M16 family. Nowadays I use an M1 carbine as the house gun and use 15 round mags in it.

I believe this is oftentimes referred to as "cruiser ready", correct?

[Jay Cunningham]

How would parents have a defensive carbine ready to go quickly whilst ensuring it is secured from small hands?

One of the reasons I mentioned Condition 3. Of course, this is no guarantee, but it's better than a round in the chamber. Another option would be to have a single mag mounted in the Redi-Mag (no mag in the magwell) and the need to physically move it into the gun. There's a lot of thought that needs to go into keeping one of these things around a little one.

[Jay Cunningham]

Currently it's just my wife and I but we do have friends and family that occasionally visit with little ones. I use two vinyl coated bicycle hooks, installed inside our bedroom closet above the door, to hang a loaded shotgun or carbine.

None of our visiting children are climbers yet. When they do reach that point, or my wife and I have kids, I'll accept the reality that I now need to lock up my carbine. What ever method I choose to secure it, I'll just have to rehearse deploying it.

One method I've though about is to arm yourself quickly with your loaded handgun first, then retrieve you carbine. Use one of those quick access lock boxes and practice opening it in the dark.

This is a well-reasoned plan, IMO. It's good to read about people's rational thoughts in this thread, rather than the usual "I'll grab my AR and light 'em up" stuff.

[MechEng]

Thanks Jay for the Kudos. Before my wife met me she never had exposer to firearms. She has a hard time rationalizing unlocked guns around the house. It took me days to talk her into letting me hang the carbine or shotgun above the closet door. The up side to this is I've been force to think about securing my guns better and still allowing me faster access.

Something to add that may spur some thought...For my handgun I use one of those lock boxes with a Simplex style 5 button lock. Simplex locks have been around forever so they are simple, reliable and very quick to open if you set up your combination right. I set up the combination as a pattern rather than a set of numbers that need to be memorized. That way I don't need to have the lights on to open it. For example, the pattern could be the outer two buttons first (1 & 5), then the center button (3) and lastly the two from either end (2 & 4)...or whatever other countless pattern permutations you can think of. Something else I've done is epoxy a small nut to button number one so I have a reference point for my fingers in the dark. I learned that trick from a blind friend of mine.

If I was going to secure a carbine, I would probably use a rifle case slid under the bed on the opposite side from the bedroom door. I like to use those 3 or 4 digit combination pad-locks on my rifle cases so I don't have to worry about hiding or locating keys. Combination locks are slower to open than keyed locks unless you preset part of the combination so you only have to input one number. Since rifle cases usually need two locks to secure, and you will most likely use the same combo on both, this would give a clever adult your combination, minus one digit, that he can guess in less than ten tries. For small children this should work great and still give you relatively quick access to you carbine after retrieving you handgun.