There’s a popular meme regarding firearms possession and safety:
Do you have your gun; it’s a bad neighborhood!?
As though crime doesn’t occur in ‘good’ neighborhoods…
(from my dear friend Brigid)
Stay in the Boat
True Blue Sam the blogger is someone perhaps just a few of you know as a long time friend and commenter here. He’s also something more special. He’s my father in law. He and my mother in law, both firearm owners and skilled and proficient shooters, had a home invasion on Thursday night. The person involved may have been high on drugs (I’m guessing meth) – he DID ransack one of the freezers in the garage, taking a ham hock, a tub of lard and some ocra. Just saying.
No one was hurt, but there are lessons to be learned. Not just the fact that the perp been detained earlier for a event, had a psyche eval (by Skype no less) and was released to continue his night of mayhem. But rapid response when this sort of thing happens. (Semi Auto is your friend).
We always worried that being in the city that something like this would happen here, and in addition to our stickers shouting alarm system! we added extra bolts, top to frame and bottom braced against a floor joist, for the walk out basement doors, in addition to cutting back shrubbery and adding extra lighting.
But this happened in a very quiet rural area, where the nearest “city” is houses, a barber shop and a church, just as they were heading to bed, and not thinking of defense.Just some things to think about folks and we’re just thankful they are safe, though a vehicle was stolen and totaled (after getting some serious air time during a chase through the woods) and there was a lot of damage to the home as the perp used firewood outside to break out several windows in an attempt to get into the main house before hitting the garage.
You can be blissfully ignorant about “the neighborhood” and how good it is, right up to the moment it isn’t.
Bad guys own cars too. There’s also the hard way to find out that the kid down the street has a raging drug problem.
An aquaintance who lived in the bowels of Los Angeles was talking once about doors.
Solid core was a given. (metal clad is a huge bonus) Not having a reinforced/hardened door jamb was a mistake people only did once.
Putting a second deadbolt up high (near shoulder level) and also adding a door bar to prevent kick-ins was what was needed to insure your door only opened when YOU wanted it to.
Good advice.
NO they don’t… Not today anyway…