My multiple home invasions last night

[Liko81]

It seem like it might be a lot more challenging to tell the good guys from the bad guys in a college town, where the good guys may be rowdy and drunk without intending any harm.

A good guy sober can easily be a bad guy drunk. Only a couple years out of college (Texas Tech no less; not much to do in that town but drink), I can tell you about plenty of Jekyll and Hyde transformations after five Jack and Cokes. A fine upstanding guy gets pissed off about work or school or another guy or a girlfriend, and his friends take him out to drink it out of his mind. Trust me, it never works. You now have a pissed drunk guy on your hands. When he wakes up in the morning he'll be the most apologetic man on the planet (especially if he's doing so from inside the drunk tank), but that doesn't erase what he did or could have done while he was out of his mind drunk and angry. You cannot really know someone's intentions when they're drunk, as facial expressions, speech, minor muscle control and other "body language" signs you would otherwise use go out the window. Either of those two encounters, if the alcohol-soaked mind of the person storming in had taken them in what could be perceived as a violent turn, could have ended with a call to the coroner's office. OP was wrong to lock his door, but would have had sufficient cause to pull the trigger if either person storming in had done anything other than what they did.

Lock your door. That way they have to KNOCK first. Then you can ask, "who is it?" They can tell you. You can tell them to go away. No need to use your gun. Yay!

In 100% of situations, good idea. In 99% of situations, you won't need your gun; when the first person, looking for girlfriend, knocks on the door and you in a man's voice asks who it is, alarm bells immediately go off in their head. "My chick's f***ing someone else!". Having the door locked is definitely a good thing even in that case, but you will most definitely have to use your gun because he's coming in to make you pay for the p***y.

 

[RPCVYemen]

A fine upstanding guy gets pissed off about work...

I am not quite sure that I believe this. I put msyelf through grad school tending bar, and while people generally became rowdier when drunk, the aggressive violent ones were pretty much jerks when they walked in the bar. Find upstanding guys might be more inclined to make cuss or shout and sing songs - which could be annoying as crap - or be rude to waitresses. They could be a handful just out of rowdy spirits, but where uninclined to fight.

BTW, from what I could tell, it had nothing to do with social/economic class, from what I could tell. There were rough looking guys who were very pleasant and CPA's who wanted to fight. The one time someone tried to jump be coming out of the keg cooler it was some MBA alumni I had cut off. In fact, a number of waitresses much preferred the working class guys - they were better tippers. We guessed that they were more likely to have had mothers/wives/sisters who'd worked at waitresses.

At any rate, that's my experience. And I was in a job where it was pretty useful to be able to tell in advance who was likely to get violent. I never saw someone I would have descibed as "a fine upstanding guy" become violent when drunk.

But beyond all that, you are right that it is hard to guess a drunk's actions. That's what would make SD in a college town hard. I remember a couple years ago where a homeowner shot and killed a student who came to his house on Halloween. The law was applied, the homeowner was found not guilty in a court of law - the right and proper verdict.

But the reality is the student who was shot had no criminal intent. He looked scary (it was Halloween), and didn't understand English very well.

I am not second-guessing the shooter's actions.

But it I shoot someone in what I think is self-defense, and it turns out to be completely and utterly unnecessary - the guy turns out to have had not even the slightest intent to harm me - that's going to be a heavy burden to carry. I expect "Well I didn't know he was harmless!" will be cold comfort.

College town have a mixure of drinknig and transience that coudl make that more likley to happen. At least in Bloomington, there were a lot of houses that had complete change of occupants every September. Getting confused about where an old girlfriend lived was not a low likelihood event. It was not all that unsual to have a drunk at your door in the middle of the night.

Mike

 

[RPCVYemen]

In that environment people often think it’s cool if they just wander into someone elses place just to see whats up. I remember it having a very communal vibe, kind of nice really.

Me, too. I lived at a house on the edge of a park, and lots of people wandered up while we were drinking. We a big porch with the requisite old couch on the front porch, and lots of partying. For all I know maybe some of those people were casing the place. But when they saw what we had, they would have left ...

Mike

 

[Avenger]

My old roommate used to get angry that I would lock the back porch door at night. He kept saying, "We're on the thrid floor, nobody is going to climb up here." Until one night he heard a tremendous crunch from outside, followed 10 minutes later by an ambulance pulling up out front. Turns out a career burglar had climbed up to our porch, tried the door, stole the tongs from our grille (just to ba able to have SOMETHING for his effort, I guess), and fell off the porch into the pine bush trying to climb back down. He broke an ankle, and smashed the crud out of the poor pine bush. The kicker is that the police decided our 3 year old $1.49 Wal-mart tongs were made of pure "unobtanium", and were ACTUALLY worth "over $50", thus kicking the charge up two misdemeanor levels.

 

[Sir Aardvark]

I find it hard to believe that you are so nervous that you would pull a gun on someone who walks into your dwelling, yet you are incapable of locking the door.