One night I awoke to find an intruder in my bedroom.My wife made a noise that woke me. I was already well behind the situation. I kept a gun at my bedside, a 1911 with a loaded mag in the mag well but no round in the chamber. I started yelling, grabbed the gun, and racked the slide. The intruder ran. I followed him downstairs, but he made it out the front door before I could get a clear shot at him.
I got away with it, but what did I do wrong? Lots of things. No burglar alarm and no dog. I had no warning until the guy was already in my bedroom. It took two hands to get the gun into operation. Had I been fending him off with one hand, I'd never have been able to use the gun as anything but a club.
Ironically, I had arranged to get a dog, and was to pick it up the next day. So after that I had a watchdog. The landlord installed a burglar alarm. And I started keeping the gun the way John Browning intended: full mag, round in the chamber, hammer cocked, safety on.
In every house I've lived in since that day, I've had either a dog or a burglar alarm. I'm always within reach of a gun when I'm in the house. (Yes, that experience left me kind of paranoid.)
I was extremely lucky, or the intruder wasn't very competent. I now try not to rely on luck. Plan for every eventuality you can think of, and be ready to act promptly and vigorously when "the day" arrives. Don't make the mistake of thinking you can fumble your way through it. When you have to act, you won't have time to think.
When a relative of mine was in the hospital, he asked us to go get his guns, because he was afraid someone would steal them. He lived in a 4 room house with 1 & 1/2 baths.
Every room had more than one gun. We collected more than 20 guns. Almost all were for hunting deer, or shotguns. A couple of 22 pistols to use for shooting game in the head if wounded, I assume.
With out exceptions, every single gun was fully loaded with one in the chamber, and ammo for each within less than an arm’s length. He was in his late 70s and lived alone with a little dog that yapped like crazy at anyone who came around.