Suffice it to say that portraying a "hard target" with exterior lighting, double cylinder deadbolts with the keys broken off in the outside locks that don't get used (to canalize) and guns both upstairs, downstairs and other places.

Having a plan is about the 80% solution. Every one and every home is different. The gun part is the last part...not the first.

Fire Extinguishers often get overlooked as less-lethal (not less-than-lethal...) means to defend yourselves. As Clint Smith said, shoot them with the White Stuff and hit them over the head with the can.

Every night, a revolver is parked on the nightstand with a long gun of some sort to back it up against multiple home invaders. We have a redoubt in our master bedroom suite with comm, guns, ammo, water, fire ladders, fire extinguishers, etc. We have the mechanism to bar the door and hunker down until the LEOs arrive. Our duress (or action word) is "Denver". The all-clear is "Albuquerque". My 11-year old knows what to do in an emergency, as do my in-laws who live with us.

When the LEOs are on scene, a Light Stick with a key (for the front door) is attached to throw out of the 2nd floor window to the responding deputies. They open (not boot) the door and clear up to our barricaded redoubt.

The upper balcony light (facing the street the LEOs would come from EB and WB) has been replaced with a high-output blue light bulb. It emits a blue beacon which can be seen for 3/4 of a mile in each direction. The dispatcher would be told that we're armed, our location and that we're AT the blue beacon.

I can go on of course...

OBTW: In Kalifornia, I traded my "evil" AR-15 for a 1873 Uberti Short Rifle in .357 Magnum. Best thing I ever did. I have added the Whisper Springs and polished the action. The result is a 10-shot (11 with .38 +Ps) lever gun that can implant a slug into an eye socket at 35-feet. The near effortless cycling of the action makes it nearly "full-auto". Lever actions were fighting guns. I traded the black rifle for the simple fact that if I had to use it in the defense of my family, I would be vilified by the "LA Crimes". The young man in pro-gun Tulsa that recently used his has had national notoriety. What if it was in Kalifornia? What other Feinstein-driven falsehoods would be the basis for further gun control? Even the most rabid anti-gun Schumer-wannabe think of the beautiful Uberti Short Rifle as a "Cowboy Gun".

Whew! Bottom Line: A plan backed up by a modicum of training all in your household on action(s) and having the wherewithal to react is a better dialogue than what gun is better than the other.

Just my $.02 worth of advice.