Every chud in my life is obsessed with someone breaking into their house and the situation being resolved with the discharge of a firearm. And these are people living in low crime areas out in the suburbs, with no pedestrians. It's frustrating to talk with these people since their whole worldview is a racist panic over some imagined brown interloper invading their white fortresses.
One of my coworkers tells me he always pulls out his Glock to check the corners when he comes home in the evening. Another has a CCTV system and an AR15 by his bed. I personally don't own a gun anymore because I don't trust myself with one, and chuds will ask me what I'll do if some mentally unwell person high on amphetamines decided to enter my apartment. I guess I'd leave or call an ambulance? It seems so unlikely of a scenario that even if I had a firearm I probably wouldn't use it right, or even register this person as a threat quickly enough to do a John Wick style takedown.
How many home invasions are actually stopped this way? Do chuds all think they're Robocop?
My mom got really paranoid when they installed a speed bump in front of her house in the lower-middle income neighborhood she used to live in because it would make all the thieves drive by slower and think about all the stuff inside that they could steal.
One of my coworkers tells me he always pulls out his Glock to check the corners when he comes home in the evening. Another has a CCTV system and an AR15 by his bed.
these people should be removed from society and helped
that is a dangerous level of paranoia
She lives in an "upper middle class" yuppie suburb where we grew up, but I moved away years ago.
She gives me updates on what it's like, and she describes it like it's mad max now. She says there are bands of roving weirdos, and there are now no-go zones that the police have declared lawless.
I ask my brother what she's on about, and he has no idea. I went to visit recently and it seemed same as it ever was lol
I am absolutely serious about home defence, that's why I've fortified it using a defence in depth strategy. While any intruders are mired in the landmines and barbed wire belts strewn across the street my outer perimeter I can launch flanking counter attacks from my neighbours garage which I have annexed to improve my defensive posture. Should these counter attacks fail to repel the intruders I am prepared to fall back to my second line of defence in the entryway, ready to call down artillery on the pre-sighted grid squares in my front lawn. My final line of defence is centred around my garden shed, which I have fortified and surrounded with further minefields. I have attempted to expand my defence lines into the park behind my house but lack the force necessary to confront the city in open battle.
I know a couple people personally who actually got home invaded.
One was a nightshifter who was asleep when people were robbing empty houses midday. He woke from dead asleep, was too tired to figure out how to fire his rifle, and just ended up clubbing the guy with it.
The other one was a dealer and his gf. He wasn't home, but would have been armed. She was home and got the shit beat out of her.
If he had been home, i'm convinced both of them would have been shot dead. Because the 6 guys who showed up definitely had a plan, were organized, and I saw them run off and they were all strapped.
Which is all just to say, it doesn't really go down like you expect it to. You're alllways gonna get caught backfooted because the invader will be prepared and you won't. The guys who fantasize about that never seem to get that reality.
Edit: also, so many of the steven segal wannabes who fantasize about this aren't even living in the sorts of areas where this actually happens.
It's something I'm worried about but specifically I'm worried about people thinking I'm too gay looking or something and trying to lynch me. I've had some weird and scary interactions with people up on the mountain where my parents live.
yea, my dad my entire life lol. He has one of the most advanced cases of suburban psychosis i've ever seen. He came to help my partners mom with some stuff and they live a normal lower-mid middle class neighborhood and his ass was freaking out like someone was gonna just walk up and break into his car. (we've always been poor btw, their neighborhood is way nicer than anything i grew up in)
When we were growing up he picked a closet and removed the doorknob and replaced it with a deadbolt and would stash shit in there. Anytime we went anywhere hed make me put all my guitars in there lol.
He didn't keep an ar15 by his bed but he did have a 22 rifle.
The last house we lived in together had french doors that he'd always bar with wood and i remember him yelling at me up and down bc i left the house one day without setting up his elaborate jerry-rigged system of wood boards to keep people out 🙄
Oh yea my last boss was one of the biggest dumbest chuds I've ever met. Legit thought my coworker wasn't coming back when he took a vacation to Mexico.
He always talked about how he leaves his door open because he hopes someone tries to break in cus "then they'd have to deal with him"
Really don't think they'd have too much trouble dealing with the 60 year old guy who went straight to the bar after work before going home to fall asleep drunk in his recliner watching fox news at full volume.
Most burglaries are done during day time when people are at work. And a lot of them are targeted based on external factors like car decals and home accessories (signs, flags) that scream “GUN HERE!!”
I do have a home security system (currently a corpo cloud crap, trying to experiment with FOSS solutions) but it’s mainly because I’m not going to walk to me peep hole to check who’s ringing only to walk away because I don’t know them. I rather just check on my phone while in bed. There have been about 3 instances where guys were trying to scope out my place and even walked into my garage to look around. But no action was taken by either of us
Sometimes when I driving home at night I do get a bit paranoid when I see the same car on my tail the entire time, so I’ll take some detours to see what’s up. But that’s mainly because I’m more afraid of zionists and the feds and not some crip breaking into my home.
I literally have nothing to steal, my phone is years old. My laptop is even older. My tv in my kitchen is from like 2010. I'm poor as fuck all they could steal are some grocery gift cards.
So I know that the real answers are about, like, liberalism, castle doctrine, yeomen fantasies, racist fearmongering in the news and popular culture, the extreme normalization of violence through many facets of society, etc., but you made me remember about how there's a genre of home security system ads (mostly from the same company, formerly Brinks, now Broadview) that are incredibly exploitative.
And here's an SNL parody of the same ad that I wouldn't call "good" because only one episode of SNL in the last decade has had good skits (and even that episode had more bad skits than good ones), but the video in question does at least do a good enough job of drawing the viewer's attention to how fucked up the original ad is.
Childish "shooting bad guys" fantasies aside, i feel like these people rarely think about how much it sucks to clean up blood. God help you if you have carpet or if the laquer on your wood floor is worn through. Never getting your deposit back.
My house has been invaded over 700 times. I have in my mono-armory : self-dense uchigatana, self-desfense aluminum bat, self-defense battle sledge (30 lbs.), self-defense double-cannister bear spray, and the much-needed self-defense flamethrower.
I do have a home invasion plan, but it's mostly a really bright flashlight and telling people "Hey we don't call the cops here but please don't break my stuff". I do need to re-up my pepper spray, though. It's past it's sell by.
Folks are much, much more likely to hurt themselves in a firearms accident than they are to ever stop a home invasion with a gun. And in almost every situation pepper spray is better at convincing people they don't want to be in a fight tonight than guns are.
i am non-straight in an american suburb, i wish i had a gun, not for 'home invaders' or 'druggies' but to give the local neo-nazi groups (there are several nazi groups where i live, expecially traditional catholic youth workers party or some shit has buildings everywhere in a nearby city) and cops (same picture i know) something to consider if they start thinking about rounding up the gays and leftists. i've had transphobic marches outside the gas station convenience store my friends work at. other of their coworkers have had stalker problems. i personally have several ex-friends who turned out to be abusers that i cut off contact with, and i worry one of them will come after me someday after something doesn't go right for them.
i don't think i'd be john wick though, i just want to take one with me and put the fear of death into the nazis or cops if they come after me, give them a reason to hesitate at the next door they kick in.
I once had a really drunk guy bang on my door at like midnight thinking there was a party or something. I said there wasn’t anything there for him and he started getting really aggressive trying to shove the door open but luckily I was wearing shoes and just blocked it with my foot. If he hasn’t been being so unpredictable I’d have offered him some water or food but I just closed and locked the door. He banged on the door for another 15 min or so before getting bored and leaving. I didn’t call the cops or anything. I have a 2 1/2ish foot aluminum tee ball bat near my door though but I’ve never even had to consider grabbing it before.
I have an anxiety disorder and semi regularly think that there is a burglar in my home. My strategy is always: stay in my room, make little sounds so that the burglar knows I’m home and awake, wait for them to leave so I can feel safe again. Of course there’s never actually a burglar. But I think it’s idiotic to seek for confrontation that could lead to someone dying over some personal items.
I own guns for self defense, but I’m not really scared of a home invasion. If it ever did happen they’re obviously here to steal a tv or some tools or something which is fine, but if it escalates farther than that you’re gonna get got.
My girlfriend's aunt had a break-in while she was home. Her family got interested in guns after that. I already had guns, because I grew up in the country where we shot guns for fun and I moved to a neighborhood where I heard lots of gunfire in anger. It's tragic that the working class is pitted against each other in this terrifying way, but that's life in the capitalist shitscape. Of course right wingers take it too far, they don't hate anyone more than other working-class people. Now I have Minecraft guns just in case a revolution pops off in Minecraft. Under no pretext!
My neighbors who are obsessed with home invasion, and own guns to deter such a threat, also leave their huge Ford F150s unlocked with the key in the ignition. Like last year (?) a group of people took the cars and went on a joyride, dropping the cars back off in the morning (they know this because they have one of those ring cameras or something). They blame "gangbangers" from the poc majority city that's like at least half an hour away by highway for this.
I don't understand how someone so concerned about home invasion can leave their car not only unlocked, but with the keys just sitting there in the ignition
yeah I'm sure Black people living a half hour down the highway are coming to some horrible little suburban wasteland (and not the equally horrible suburban wastes located much closer to the city, nor just going to the wealthier areas of said city) to take your car for a joyride for a single night. It was absolutely just local high schoolers. I say that as someone who not only finds the "gangbanger" thesis absurd, but as someone who was also a local high schooler at one point and knows what these kids get up to.
Yeah, and it's starting to get a little unnerving... In the beginning I could appreciate the hobby of collecting, building, and shooting guns. In fact I was intrigued myself at one point and thought about buying some for the sake of the hobby. However, for them it has since devolved and their apartment is now pretty much filled with weapons. Luckily they are a little more left leaning with their socioeconomical and political views, but ever since they got a permit to carry I've noticed more and more that they come off like they are yearning for a reason to use them.
I am, but I have generalized anxiety disorder and I am obsessed with literally anything bad that could happen. I kinda assume a lot of that paranoia is underdiagnosed anxiety.