This is another true story that happened to me about 5 years ago. As I said in another post, we live outside the city limits in an area that most would be considered the country. LEO response time can be a very, very long time. Our house has two doors one in the front and one in the back, but only the rear door is ever used. So around 2:30 am I hear a strange door bell. This was not our normal door bell, we had lived in the house for five years and had never heard the front door bell, it has a different ring than the rear door bell. After a couple seconds I realized what it was. I grabbed my S&W 629 and headed for the front door, while my wife got the kids in the back bedroom. I yeleed through the door that I had a gun and knew how to use it, no response. I slowly unlocked the door and cleared it from the door jamb, I continued to open the door with my foot while having the gun at ready to fire. I did not see anybody outside and wasn't going to venture outdoors, at this time I heard the rear door bell ring. I closed the front door and locked it and proceeded to the rear door anouncing again that I had a firearm. I opened the rear door the same as I had the front ready to fire, when the front door bell rang again. Now I was really getting pissed, locked the back door and went to the front, opened as before, saw nobody then all of a sudden a guy jumped out from the side of the porch standing directly in front of me. It was amazing how fast I had the gun pointed at this guy's nose, my finger was on the trigger and the hammer was already halfway back, all of this happened without ever thinking about it. I started screaming at this guy to show me his hands, the man started to make up a story about his car ran out of gas and he needed help. It was clear he was making up the story and that he was drunk. Our house sits way back off the street, there are other house directly on the street that someone who was out of gas would have gone to. I told him to stay right there. I locked the door and went into the basement to retrieve a gas can. I handed it to the guy and told him to keep it. I kept my sights on him until he was gone. It was very clear that this guy was scared to death staring down the barrel of that 44 mag, but I didn't realize how scared he was until I saw the puddle on the ground on my porch. This guy peed his britches, not to say I wouldn't have done the samething if I was staring down a big hole! The next day I found the gas can I had given him with about 1/2 of the gas still in it, it was then that I also realized that I gave him my premixed gas. Oh well not my car. I will never know what his true intentions were, but I was glad I was able to protect my family. Now I am sure I will get flamed for ever opening the door, I should have stayed in the back bedroom with my family like little scared church mice while the BG does whatever he wants to my property. Soory NC doesn't have a retreat law when you are on your own property, besides as I said in another post I have been properly trained how to protect myself and my family and hiding in a corner is just not me. What I did learn from this situation was how important training is. You will never truly realize how important training is until your must draw your weapon in a defensive manner and you do so out of pure natural response, you won't even have to think about what you are doing, it will just happen. Again, before you flame me for opening the door, let me say that I don't encourage anyone else to do the same. If you feel more comfortable in the bedroom waiting for a LEO to arrive than that is exactly what you should do, nothing wrong with that. If you can learn anything from this event I hope it is how important training is. I hope and pray you will never have to draw your weapon on a BG, but if you do it should be something that happens naturally, quickly and without thinking. The time to think is before you draw, not while your drawing. Flame Away.