Mailbox Vandalism Rant

[glockten]

I'm steaming.

Just returned from my mom's house, where I discovered someone had fired a shotgun through her mailbox. I couldn't find the hull but did find the wad; it appears to be from a 12 gauge birdshot load.

Her mailbox has been vandalized before, but with blunt instruments. So last year, my brother and I installed a heavy-gauge steel shroud around the box. This time some oxygen thief fired into the front of the mailbox, which is unprotected by the shroud. A new jacket my mom had ordered was inside at the time. It was ruined, of course.

Mom hadn't reported it, so I called the sheriff's department. The deputy said it was probably teenagers wanting to see what a shotgun would do; I agree.

I know no THR members fall into the above category. But just in case some brain-dead punk ever peruses this thread and wonders what a shotgun will do to someone else's property, let me offer an alternative suggestion.

Chamber a round, flick off the safety, put the muzzle in your mouth, and depress the trigger.

If you're still curious after that, you can shoot up my mailbox.

 

[Mark Tyson]

Sorry to hear about it. Consider one of those heavy duty steel boxes with a padlock - that will protect letters and the like, especially important documents like credit card bills, etc. If you're ordering merchandise, you should use a service that actually puts the stuff in your hands and makes you sign for it. Or you could get a PO box or a rented mail box. It wouldn't ordinarily be worth the expense, but you say this has happened more than once.

 

[natedog]

I remember a long thread here or on TFL about mailbox vandalism, and it had plenty of funny solutions.

 

[Old Fuff]

They probably won't catch the jerk unless he's seen doing in another mail box. But if he does get caught he's committed a federal crime, and you can see that he gets nailed for it. I hope you get the chance.

 

[boing]

I think video surveillance equipment isn't too expensive these days...?

 

[Jason Demond]

For some reason, this sound personal to me. Did your Mother really anger anyone lately? Does she have protection?

 

[Jeeper]

Speaking of mailbox vandelism!

My roomate in college parents lived kindof out in the suburbs on a large track of land. Their mailbox kept getting rundown my some punks who would just plow over it with their truck. This happened about 4 or five times and then we decided to fix it. His father owned a backhoe so we dug us a nice deep hole and stuck a really thick pipe about 8 feet into the ground. We then covered the pipe with wood to make it look like any other mailbox post. About a month later my buddies dad was leaving for work and found one of the neighbors kids(the one we all suspected of doing it anyway) truck wrapped around the pole. Funny enough; no more mailboxes were ever run down!

 

[Zundfolge]

I think video surveillance equipment isn't too expensive these days...?

http://www.protectiondepot.com/motioncam.asp


Remember, tampering with mail boxes is a Federal crime. Once you snap pics of the perps, call the FBI, not the local Barney Fife.

 

[AK103K]

Mailbox baseball is the local sport around here. Those who make a blatant effort to "re enforce" them seem to get hit worse. Baseball is still better than beer, shotguns with buck shot and road signs. Buck shot travels a little farther than a mailbox. Then again, there are still quarter sticks around. Ah, life in the country!

 

[glockten]

I've twice run off vandals who attempted to take out my mailbox, but this incident with my mom's is the first I've encountered involving a firearm.

I doubt the idiots realize that by using a gun as their tool, they're putting themselves in mortal danger.

 

[zahc]

All of our immediate family have stout steel plate MB's courtesy of yours truly. Piece of well casing on steel pipe works quite well.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Jerks are giving us gun owners a bad name.

 

[Snowdog]

A mailbox assassin?

 

[glockten]

Snowdog, that photo is hysterical!

 

[Rembrandt]

...well they defintely committed a couple of Federal offenses, destruction of US mail being one.

(Around 1958) we had a couple of kids that threw an M80 into an old ladies mailbox and ran like the wind....buldged the mailbox and split the seams, Old gal saw the kids running away and called the regional FBI office to turn them in...an agent came out and interviewed the boys, scared the crap out of both of them...don't remember if any charges were brought, but both ended up entering the military shorty afterward....a common practice that judges used back then to correct offenders.

 

[P95Carry]

Generally lucky round here .... no major mail box probs but oh man ..... would that ever pi$$ me off ........ bigtime.

I think If I found a young and spotty ''12G tester'' tryin this on ... I'd maybe have to return the favor (just wishful thinkin!) .... by seein how his tires stood up to firearms discharge (you name the cal !).

 

[JohnKSa]

Solutions for mailbox problems.

For mailboxes being run over.

Buy some heavy cast iron 4" pipe. Bury it next to the mailbox with about 6' under the ground and maybe 2' sticking out. Pour pipe full of cement. Buy some nice little bushes and plant them around the base of your mailbox. Don't leave too much pipe sticking out of the ground.

You will want video surveillance so you have something amusing to watch when you get frustrated about the world.

For mailbox baseball. Buy the largest mailbox you can find. Buy the smallest mailbox you can find. Center the small mailbox in the large mailbox and pour the space in between full of cement. Mount it on a normal pole so nothing looks suspicious. Again, video surveillance would be fun.

For people shooting mailboxes. Wait out on the front porch with a semi-auto centerfire rifle. When they shoot, shoot back--a lot. If anyone questions you just say that you were walking out the door to go hunting/to the shooting range/whatever and someone opened fire on you. Check your local laws, of course. I don't think they'd even question you in TX...

 

[P95Carry]

John - I do declare ... i think you share my same vindictive mindset!!!

 

[Bowlcut]

well what concerns me is....that to shoot from the end...wouldnt they be basicly shooting toward the house??? like toward where your mother was sleeping or something.

the blaten destuction of PERSONAL property is lower than low. and stupid....some people need to quit wasteing our air

 

[glockten]

what concerns me is....that to shoot from the end...wouldnt they be basicly shooting toward the house?

Exactly.

If I see someone at my mailbox with a shotgun, 90 feet from my front door, pointing it in my direction, guess what my response will be.

 

[WheelMan]

It might very well be one of those urban (or suburban in this case) legends, but I remember a story about some kids driving around knocking off mailboxes with an aluminum bat They targeted a mailbox that had been fortified against such an attack by it's owner. Well the combination of the forward velocity of their vehicle plus the swing of the bat into a heavy steel mailbox that just wasn't going to move caused the tip of the bat to bounce so mightily off the mailbox that it struck the batman in the head and killed him. I'm usually not particularly heartless, but if you loose your life in such a stupid and pointless act I have no sympathy.

 

[JohnKSa]

Well the combination of the forward velocity of their vehicle plus the swing of the bat into a heavy steel mailbox that just wasn't going to move caused the tip of the bat to bounce so mightily off the mailbox that it struck the batman in the head and killed him.

I'd hate to have anything like that happen in front of my house...

































...and not get it on video!

P95 Carry,
I prefer to think of myself as a creative problem solver rather than as vindictive.

 

[duckfoot]

Wow and I thought I was bad. But just for your sake you might want to check out if there are any stupid laws that say "for the safety of all motorists all mail boxes must not be able to with stand the force of X amount of impact force and still must be set X amount of feet from the road to be serviced by the USPS" Some towns have laws like this because of reactions like yours in their minds have hurt people that ran off the road and hit a reinforced mail box by mistake and wound up wrap around that pole you put there.

With that said I have a put my cast iron mail box on a reinforced swing arm set on a big 6' x 12 cast pipe filled with super mix and metal scrap set 8 feet in the ground 8 feet from the road. My mail flag is a red painted 1" x 12" rebar set to the base of the box because some sumbitch kept ripping the sheet metal ones I made off, after installing my new mail box.

Still every once in a great while I head a thud in the middle of the night of some nut ball trying to give me a run for my money. The most I have to do is spray paint the marks off of the useless attempts to undo my work.

Hope it lasts, cause that mail box was one mother to put together.

 

[swingset]

I've had 5 destroyed on me. Between the imbred local teenagers and the snow plow drivers I can't keep a good one. My 2nd box was a 6" iron pipe filled with concrete, and the top got blown off so hard that I couldn't salvage the pipe and it ended up backfiring on me (lots of work to replace).

Nowadays I use the cheapest junk galv. pipe and $5 walmart plastic mailbox they sell. It sucks, but I've got a new one back up in 10 minutes.

 

[Okiecruffler]

We lost 3 mailboxes in one month to a bunch of knuckle draggers who would drive by and nail the box with a bat. Mom told dad to quit replacing them, this was in the days before direct deposit, so all important mail, i.e. Dad's government check and VA check, went to a P.O. Box in town. But dad put up one last mail box. Bought the biggest mailbox they had at Sears, filled it up with cement. Took me and my brother to lift the danged thing up on the pole. A few mornings later we went out to wait for the school bus and found our new mailbox laying on the ground, right next to an aluminium baseball bat . Funny thing was, a local rival school's starting wide reciever missed the last 3 games of the season, and they missed the playoffs for the first time in 7 years, due to a fractured wrist. Coinky-Dink? Maybe