Glad everyone is ok!
In our neighborhood we had several houses broken into, or attempts last weekend, including Thorne's parent's house, they live 2 houses down from me. Slashed screens in several houses and one truck broken into.
Well, the house between the 2 of us, at about 2am the 14yr old boy went down to the kitchen to get a drink of water. To his surprise someone was half way thru the kitchen window! The boy yelled, "What the hell are you doing!" and then ran upstairs to wake up his dad. The guy took off. I guess they had left the window unlocked. They cut the screens and then check to see if the window is locked.
My wife and I have a plan. We have a 1,000,000 Candle Watt spot light in her bed side table, a small aluminum bat in the corner on my side. If something goes down I grab the bat, roll over her (and hope I don't kill her in the process), she grabs the spotlight, I unlock the gun cabinet, grab the 500 which is loaded with a deer Slug then Buckshot then Slug etc. Meanwhile My Old English Bull Dog could hold them off while we prepare to make our way to the boys room which is on the other side of the house (we have a ranch style home). She spots and I shoot.
Bottom line is, you have to have a plan and have to practice! ADT can only help after it's too late.
After what happen last weekend I thought of the potential consequences of firing the shotgun. I live in a neighborhood where the houses are 10 feet apart. Where is that slug or buckshot going to stop? My neighbors house? My son's bedroom? So come to find out they make shells that are loaded with cork. The cork will not go through multiple walls but is strong enough to break someone's arm, so I'm going to pick some up.