WHO GOES THERE?

Perimeter Defense Buyer's Guide

- Michael Janich

Praemonitus, praemunitus:

To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, every year about 3.7-million burglaries are committed in America. Roughly 28 percent of those burglaries take place while someone is present in the home and about 7 percent result in violent victimization of a resident. While those figures aren't staggering, they aren't particularly comforting either, especially if one of those unlucky homes happens to be yours.

If you're reading this magazine, odds are you already have some type of plan to deal with a potential home invader. Whether it's accessing a weapon, hunkering down in a safe room, or a little of both, the key to implementing that plan is time. The longer it takes you to react and get your strategy in motion, the less likely it will be successful and the greater your chances of becoming a victim. However, when you consider the fact that 61 percent of burglaries of occupied residences occur at night and 38 percent while the residents are asleep, your visions of a perfectly choreographed split-second reaction plan start to fade pretty quickly.

So how can you stack the odds in your favor by earning more reaction time? Easy. With perimeter defense technology.

In simple terms, perimeter defenses are passive devices designed to either bolster the physical security of your home or provide early warning of a security breach so you can drag your sleepy ass out of bed and get into fight mode. Technology-wise, they run the gamut from dead-simple objects like door wedges to sophisticated wireless alarms and infrared trip flares. Generally, however, they can be classified in three basic categories: