Category: Guns

I’ve been hearing ads for Simplisafe home security systems and thinking about switching to them when my current contract is up. Then this:

Unless you are a trained professional, don’t grab a weapon. This includes firearms, baseball bats and pepper spray. They all sound like a good idea, but again, we don’t know how the burglar will react to seeing an armed person. If they do have a weapon, they may be more likely to use it when they see you have one too. If you use pepper spray in an enclosed space, you and your family will also be affected by the pepper spray. If you use another weapon, such as a firearm and are not a trained professional, you run the risk of hurting yourself or a family member. And when a weapon is in your hand, you also run the risk of arriving police officers mistaking you for the intruder! 

So, we’re going to ignore the mountain of successful defensive gun uses (and other weapons) to spout worthless advice probably written by corporate lawyers afraid of being sued.

Do you know what my current company’s salesperson said when he saw my gun safe? “That’s cool! I’ve been thinking about getting my permit.” Plus, they had a booth at the NRAAM. They at least recognize who is buying their system and aren’t likely to insult us with such worthless advice.

So, Simplisafe, you have lost my business. End of story. 

H/t to Miguel

In the past two months, we have had three high profile mass killings. Charleston, Chattanooga, and now Lafayette. It’s still early on Lafayette to have any real facts other than some people are dead, some are injured, and the news media is ecstatic with another bloody story to sell to the public. Yeah, I guess I’m getting a bit cynical. Expect the same byplay on the gun control stage with Bloomberg’s minions telling us that restricting guns in some way would have prevented this and our side saying if someone in the theater had been armed, it would have been over sooner. Facts tend to support the latter, but we’ll still have to play that dance out once again.

What do these incidents tell me? No where is safe. Have a plan. Expect to have to put that plan into effect in the worst possible conditions. Carry your damn guns. Carry your damn flashlights. 

My girlfriend showed me a prank video where people were in an elevator car. The lights would go out and this kid would climb out of a secret panel and act like a horror movie ghost. None of those people had even a pen light on them for when the lights went out. None of them had a plan for reacting when fecal matter impacts turbine. You could see the sheer panic in their reactions. 

We live in a dangerous world. An infinitely better world than that of our ancestors, but still a dangerous world. Not just from crime, but disease, injury, and failures in the complex systems that work in our lives. 

Please plan accordingly.

Edit: My brother has informed me that this post caused him to pick up a pocket flashlight. My work here is done.