After nearly a decade of teaching and learning at a busy professional firearms training school, I have to say that the more I've learned about how to clear a home, the less willing I am to do it unless it's utterly necessary.
Here's a news story about a man who came home from work and found his front door open. He armed himself and went inside to look for a bad guy. He found one, and now he’s dead.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,3679823.story
I suppose some would say that’s a case of “don’t bring a lead pipe to a gunfight,” and that’s true. But the bigger lesson is,
don’t go looking for someone who wants to kill you.
It's one thing if you absolutely have to do this thing for some compelling reason -- such as, you reasonably believe a family member is inside. Or if you're 97.32% sure that there's no lurking bad guy because your dog hasn't alerted, or because of some quirky personal circumstance (such as a known-to-be-malfunctioning door latch on a windy day).
But if it's just a matter of being too embarrassed to call for backup, that's very unwise. Because with situations like this, it turns out that it
is possible to die of embarrassment.
pax