What are you supposed to do if you are in your home at night, and suddenly hear the sound of your door being smashed open?

The normal response of an armed person would be to grab a gun and shoot at the invader before the invader has a chance to get inside and kill you. In my case, I'm fortunate enough to have Coco, who in addition to being a loving companion is a highly vigilant watchdog. Any invader would have to get past her first, and it wouldn't be easy, as they'd have to shoot her. Few invaders would do that, as like most predators, they're looking for easy marks. Hearing a determined dog barking, they'd most likely leave. However, if we assume I was asleep when an invader broke down the door, the commotion from the confrontation with Coco probably would, especially if the invader shot her. I realize a home invasion is very unlikely, but I have a rule of thumb: when someone breaks into my house and shoots my dog, that means I am in dire danger of being killed, so I must get a gun and defend myself lest I be killed.

As I say, this is my standard rule of thumb for such a worst case scenario.

Increasingly, I see the possibility of an alternative scenario which is utterly terrifying to contemplate.

Suppose that the invader is not a criminal, but a police officer?

Can they just show up at night without any notice to me, and suddenly break down my door and shoot my dog?

Apparently so. All they need is a "no knock" search warrant. If they have that, then I get no notice, no knocking, no nothing. I'd just be fast asleep and hear the sound of the door being broken down, Coco barking, and it could all be over for poor little me.

I don't like to think that this could happen in the United States of America, but I keep reading about incidents like this:

Officer Jarrod Shivers was shot and killed while executing a search warrant in Cheseapeake, Virginia Thursday night.

The suspect had no criminal record (at least in the state of Virginia). And he says in an interview from jail he had no idea the undercover cops breaking into his home were police. The suspect, 28-year-old Ryan David Frederick, also says a burglar had broken into his home earlier this week.

Thought the raid was apparently part of a drug investigation, police aren't saying what if any drugs were found. They won't even confirm that police had the correct address. But they have arrested Frederick and charged him with first-degree murder.

I Googled for more details, and sure enough, this took place at night, and the resident says he was in bed:

Redstart Avenue, a street that dead-ends at a church, still was reeling Friday after a police officer was fatally shot there the night before. The residents say they are in disbelief after realizing that a 28-year-old neighbor is a suspect.

"It shocked me to death," said Mavis Cosner, who has lived on the street since 1960. "I'm still a little nervous."

Shivers, a 34-year-old father, was shot as was trying to enter at the house in the street's 900 block around 8:30 p.m. He and several other officers were there with a search warrant as part of a drug investigation, police said.

Shivers was pronounced dead at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. He left behind a wife and three children - ages 2, 8 and 14.

After the shooting, detectives on scene retreated for their safety. The home, which sits in the middle of the block, remained surrounded until the SWAT team arrived and entered.

Police arrested 28-year-old Ryan David Frederick, who lived at the home, and charged him with first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being held in the Chesapeake City Jail.

Frederick said in a jailhouse interview Friday he had no idea a police officer was on the other side of the door when he opened fire.

"No, sir," he told WAVY-TV. "I just wish I knew who they were," he said. "I didn't want any trouble."

Frederick said he was in bed when he heard someone trying to come into the home.

"I thought it was the person who had broken into my house the other day," he said.

Frederick said his home had been burglarized two or three days earlier.

I guess the theory is that if you have illegal drugs, then you ought to just live with the possibility of a "no knock" search warrant being executed against you at night, by heavily armed police who will sure as hell shoot your dog first. (The only upside to the latter is that the shooting of your dog at least allows a certain interval of time to determine what the hell is going on.)

While it's bad enough that police can break in and deploy massive lethal firepower to enforce a search warrant based on a victimless crime, but what if they have the wrong address? If my neighbor is selling dope out of his house and some bureaucrat who can't be fired for having dyslexia can't enter the numbers right and enters my address (or if an "informant" was mistaken or malevolent), what is to put me on notice that the people bashing in my door are in fact police and not criminals?

Incidents keep happening, and the only remedy I can see is to get rid of night time no knock warrants.

Otherwise, if they keep doing this, it will become another argument in favor of gun control.

No, seriously. Police will claim they "don't feel safe" executing these no knock warrants, so to "avoid more such tragedies," all citizens (beginning with those in "at risk neighborhoods") should be disarmed.

Don't laugh. It's already a major unstated reason for dog control, especially "pit bull control." The best protection you can buy against a home invasion SWAT team is being called the "number one dog of choice for drug dealers." Sure, there's a "loophole"; convicted criminals can still legally own dogs. So can ordinary citizens.

(I don't know what it will take before it dawns on the latter that the war on drugs is incompatible with freedom. The latter even includes the right to self defense!)

MORE: There seems to be some confusion about "no knock" theory, with commenter Darleen Click saying that they shouldn't be used in drug cases.

Unfortunately, drug cases are the raison d'etre for the existence of no knock warrants:

In the US, a no knock warrant is a warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement officers to enter a property without knocking and without identifying themselves as police. It is issued under the belief that any evidence they hope to find can be destroyed during the time that police identify themselves and the time they secure the area.

The number of no-knock raids has increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000 last year, according to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. Raids that lead to deaths of innocents are relatively rare, but since the early 1980s, 40 bystanders have been killed, according to the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

One thing I can state confidently is that dogs hear and smell people coming way before their owners can. Even before the break-ins occur, dogs ruin the element of surprise.

MORE: In the aftermath of a Minneapolis no knock/wrong house raid in which a man who spoke no English defended himself Ed Morrissey called for a conversation in every state and city:

....the use of the no-knock raid heightens some risks even while it might lower others, and it makes mistakes like the one at Khang's house deadly affairs. Obviously the Minneapolis police did not do their homework before busting down the door of Vang Khang, and the SWAT raid on a law-abiding resident put everyone's lives at risk for no good reason.

We need to have a conversation in every state and city about the wisdom of no-knock raids. In cases of national security and imminent violence, one might see room for such an approach, but otherwise police should announce themselves before entering private property. It seems to me that the Constitution takes that approach in the Fourth Amendment, and as Khang can attest, it does so for good reason. At least Khang is alive to attest to it.