Posted on 07/26/2016 4:37:06 AM PDT by marktwain
A friend of mine had a Defensive Gun Use (DGU) a few days ago.
He had parked a bike near the front door, cable locked to a metal chair. It is a decent cable lock. The dog started alerting at the door, in the middle of day, during the week. There was no knock or doorbell. My friend keeps odd hours.
My friend accessed his house gun, a S&W N frame model 28, that had been converted to .45 ACP. The security door was locked. He opened the inside door with his left hand, the .45 revolver in his right. In the entryway was a 16-18 year old young man with a shaved head and tattoos down his neck. My friend is very observant, and had not seen this young man in the neighborhood before.
The young man was studying the bike, the lock, and the chair. My friend held the revolver in the attitude shown in the picture. You do not see more of him because he wishes to remain anonymous. In the actual event, he was in the doorway, visible through the locked security door.
In fluent Spanish, he asked "May I help you?"
The tattooed youth looked up. He did not say anything. My friend said that he did a very credible 100 yard dash. My friend did not pursue. There was no reason to pursue. He never pointed the pistol at the youth. He never threatened anyone. He never reported the incident to police. What was there to report? No crime had been committed, except perhaps trespassing.
In Arizona, you are allowed to threaten deadly force to prevent trespassing. As the young man immediately left the property, it is unlikely a judge or jury would convict him of trespassing. My friend had only asked him if he needed help.
This is a good approximation of the "typical" if there is such a thing, DGU. No shots fired. The mere presence of the firearm defused the situation. If no firearm were present, the youth might have been emboldened to further action.
As it was, there was no physical confrontation. It appears that a guilty conscience was sufficient to command flight.
It is not hard to believe that such incidents occur between 500,000 and 3 million times a year, as noted by the CDC in 2013 (pdf):
Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010).There is no incentive, actually a negative incentive, to report an incident such as happened to my friend. There is a small but real potential for it to bring trouble to him; there is almost no potential for it to prevent trouble for him. It is not an incident that would make even a local news cycle.
So why didnt he just buy a Model 22? Sounds like he likes to make things difficult.
I was involved in a similar unreported DGU several years ago. There were three of them and I had a 5 shot S&W snubbie .357 magnum. The guy doing the talking even had tats up the neck too. One dude was posted beside the passenger door of the truck. The other perp was posted in the middle of the highway as a lookout. The third guy was checking out the closed gas station we were at to make sure there was just the two of us and there was just two of us. It was immefiately clear to me what was going on so I told the wife to lock her door and pulled the gun out of the drivers side door compartment and stuck it behind my back and then continued to pump the gas while maintaining a special kind of eye contact with the third guy that let him know that I knew what was going on and that their plan was going to go south quickly. He realized that I was holding “something” behind my back I guess because he looked at the dude posted next to my wife and shook his head “no” and they all slipped back into the shadows. The whole incident transpired not far from Roswell, New Mexico and lasted less than a minute.
That little 5 shot snubbie is sitting on the end table right beside me presently but there’s a full size Glock 10mm right beside it because I learned that day that a 5 shot snubbie really isn’t enough gun to fight with, especially when there’s three of them and one of you. It’s better than nothing but still, generally insufficient.
I suspect it’s a Model 25 converted to use moon clips for 45 ACP. A 28 would required a cylinder, barrel and allot of timing mod’s.
A definite yes on that. We love our guns in the South. I’d be willing to bet that there are at least 5000 within a five mile radius of my house. I don’t even know how many we have. It’s sounds like a war zone when it’s a nice weekend day and everyone is out getting some practice in. I can still out shoot all the guys.
My FRiend, I love hearing about incidents like yours. It’s more firepower against the anti gunners.
Thank you for your service as well. It takes hard men (and women) who don’t take sh_t from no one.
Do you lock your front door when you go to bed?
Where I live there is almost no crime yet I have a steel-mesh security door because I leave my inner door open at night during the summer. This allows air flow throughout the house during the night.
The other reason I like it is because when the light is brighter outside than inside you cannot see that I am in a wheel chair when I answer the door. You also cannot see that I have a handgun beside my leg.
The steel-mesh security door provide me with the assurance that a stranger knocking on my door is not going to overpower my wife or myself. That’s the kind of things you think about as you get older.
Don’t be afraid of growing older. You’ll still do stupid things... only slower.
Interesting. My Amazon packages have always been delivered by UPS—brown trucks and uniformed drivers.
That sure puts lie to the claim that 98% of the people are sheep.
“If I lived in a neighborhood where I needed a steel-mesh security door instead of a screen-door, I’d think about moving.”
Yeah, me too. But, I live in the country, so I don’t worry about this sort of thing much... And I have a lot of dogs (German Shepherd Dogs).
AND/or the obvious sound af a round being chambered.
It might depend on where you are.
In my area, they have been using independent deliverymen for the past six months or so. At most they might have a magnetic Amazon sign on their car, but usually not.
I don't even know they have been there until I get an email that says my package is on my front porch.
We have to understand that most of the time when a person has to actually display a weapon it goes unreported. I gave them a description of the the vehicle only and what he looked like.
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