Robbed Please All Read (Tucson: apartment complex, homeowners insurance, homes)

[observer53]

Get an alarm system instead, please. If you shoot someone carrying your TV out of your house, sorry, you will be the one getting the most attention at the police station. And if you or your wife are faced with an armed intruder, they've probably had more practice.

[Magnum Mike]

If an armed intruder forces his way into my house, he won't be able to walk out, he'll be carried out in a body bag because he'll get a 240-grain hollow point bullet from my .44 magnum, or a 200-grain hollow point bullet from my .45 ACP.

BigBee - Your home insurance should cover the loss. One thing you can do is put some brief information and the serial numbers of the items on a piece of paper and put it in a place where a burgler is not likely to look. Scumbags like that have a good chance of getting busted and if they find the items in his possession, you'll get them back, assuming of course a police report was filed with the information about the items.

[blisterpeanuts]

Originally Posted by observer53

Get an alarm system instead, please. If you shoot someone carrying your TV out of your house, sorry, you will be the one getting the most attention at the police station. And if you or your wife are faced with an armed intruder, they've probably had more practice.

can't you argue that they were threatening to throw the TV at you? One of those big-screen models could do a lot of damage, maybe even break some bones.

[bigbee13]

We got an alarm system, I doubt that they have had more practice. I have hunted my whole life, ten years in the military, I just don't have a handgun in the house right now. I have a couple rifles but they are hidden away. I am careful with any weapon and I would not just just start shooting away, however I am also not going to give some a$$hole that breaks into my house the chance to do harm to my family. If they are running out of the house, then they get to leave however if they take one step toward me or my family then they do not get to leave.

[Rick Lee]

Last time my wife and I were away from the house for more than a weekend, I just parked the cars in the garages very close to the house doors, so that no one would be able to get through there with anything larger than a duffle bag. Sure, they could still use a dolly to get the tv out the front door. But they'd have to really earn that. I'm a weirdo and remove the fuel pump relay from my nice car when I travel. The way that car is parked in the garage, not even a flatbed could get it out of there with the steering wheel locked, drive block engaged and fuel pump relay out. No house is impenetrable to a very determined and experienced thief. I just try to make sure the lazy, casual ones won't be rewarded if they make it into my house when I'm away.

BTW, those home secutiry system commercials on tv are just so insulting. Yeah, running for the phone and being told "I'm sending help now" is really gonna save you from a determined home intruder. Anyone who's scared off by a siren is an amateur. The pros know how to defeat the siren before it gets tripped. And then those unarmed sheeple, relying on Brinks or whatever will be found and mopped up by the police long after it's all over.

[Wyoming Darrell]

Is this an issue of "Judged by twelve or carried by six"?

[blisterpeanuts]

Rick Lee gives some excellent tips on how to avoid becoming a victim. So I'm compiling a few of them here and hoping others will add to them.

- If you're leaving the house for an extended time, disable any vehicles that are left parked. Even if they know how to jack a car, it won't go far without a wheel or some other vital part that may be stored in a locked cabinet somewhere. Splice a lock-switch into the + cable to the battery. Without a key, no power. If they want to unsplice the cable they're going to have some work to do.

- Buy some steel plates, like from a weight lifting set, and insert about 200 pounds of them into the bottom of your video console box, or bolt them to the bottom of the stand. If it's the flat screen variety, maybe just drill a couple of holes through the base put a couple of 1/2" bolts right through it into the studs. Ugly, but it won't walk away while you're gone. Also, it's less likely to fall over if there's an earthquake.

- Take the hard disk out of your PC, or keep your important data on an external USB hard disk and just take that sucker with you, or hide it somewhere cool. Drill a hole in the corner of your LCD monitor, loop a metal cable through it and just bolt it into the wall. Etch your name and address along the plastic frame at the top, too, just to make it harder to fence.

- program a CD player to loop continuously (most of them can do this) on a custom-made CD that you can burn on your PC: about 10 minutes of silence, then really loud "WHO'S THERE? IS THAT YOU? JUST A MINUTE, I'M ON THE PHONE." Space it out unevenly on the CD. Hide the speakers and just run it all the time when you're not home.

- put the heat on high, even in the summer. Get the place up to like 120F or higher, and they'll want to get the heck out of there.


any other ideas?

[observer53]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Last time my wife and I were away from the house for more than a weekend, I just parked the cars in the garages very close to the house doors, so that no one would be able to get through there with anything larger than a duffle bag. Sure, they could still use a dolly to get the tv out the front door. But they'd have to really earn that. I'm a weirdo and remove the fuel pump relay from my nice car when I travel. The way that car is parked in the garage, not even a flatbed could get it out of there with the steering wheel locked, drive block engaged and fuel pump relay out. No house is impenetrable to a very determined and experienced thief. I just try to make sure the lazy, casual ones won't be rewarded if they make it into my house when I'm away.

BTW, those home secutiry system commercials on tv are just so insulting. Yeah, running for the phone and being told "I'm sending help now" is really gonna save you from a determined home intruder. Anyone who's scared off by a siren is an amateur. The pros know how to defeat the siren before it gets tripped. And then those unarmed sheeple, relying on Brinks or whatever will be found and mopped up by the police long after it's all over.

Those are good tips. Manyof the burglars any more are not pros, just looking for money or items to sell for money for drugs, etc -- witness the kids that were caught in Bigbee's neighborhood-- so they may not in fact know how to disarm the system. I think they will choose another house over one that's got security system signs, all else being equal.

[Houston3]

Originally Posted by observer53

Sorry, Arizona does NOT allow this. Like I said, stop and READ the statutes. Just as an example, I recall that a man was prosecuted for shooting someone he caught leaving his driveway in his vehicle. I'm not "on the side of the burglars" but the law is what it is.

I don't live in Arizona.

[Houston3]

Texas statue is a good example: (1) it removes the duty to retreat when someone is threatened inside their own home, vehicle, or place of work; and (2) it provides immunity from civil liability and criminal prosecution to people whose actions fit within its boundaries. For the purpose of this article, the important conditions are (emphasis added):

(a) . . . a person is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful force. The actor’s belief that the force was immediately necessary as described by this subsection is presumed to be reasonable if the actor:

(1) knew or had reason to believe that the person against whom the force was used: (A) unlawfully and with force entered . . . the actor’s occupied habitation, vehicle, or place of business or employment;


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