Yeah, that’s what I think too. To me they’re equally normal and plausible behaviors.
The front door is almost always locked unless we are expecting company. We come and go via the back door, and we keep it locked, too. Especially when I am working from home. My office is diagonally opposite the back door and if someone came in, I wouldn’t hear them. And the one time that we were burglarized, they kicked in the back door. If they do that now, they will get a nasty surprise if I’m home. 
Well, it would not be okay with me if one of my children were having a sleepover at your house; but otherwise, sure…I guess.
You do seem to have a strange definition of “working really hard” and “exceptional explanation” though. I’m posting more than others, but then I started the thread. Is that not how it usually works? You needn’t worry that I’m finding it too much work; I appreciate your concern though.
As for your “exceptional explanations”, I would call them just the opposite: mundane, common explanations for why someone might not lock the door–particularly the latter two. My queries about philosophical explanations do not derive froum any particular point I’m trying to prove, but simply curiosity and a desire to keep the conversation going.
Personally, I do find it strange and even unthinkable to routinely leave exterior doors unlocked. And I will admit that I did previously think that generally, sane and responsible people would share this view. Now, less sure of that.
I’m not sure at all that the number of people ITT declaring themselves to be non-lockers without some other kind of “buffer” than locked doors, whether it be dogs or gates (and I didn’t even ask about guns!) is greater then the number who have echoed my position, that exterior doors are left locked except when going through them.
And I am quite sure that if we looked just at the population with no gates or dogs or guns (of which I certainly have none of the above) and figured the percentage who leave their doors unlocked at night, it would be quite a small percentage; and furthermore, most of the rest of us would find that minority to be rather reckless. If they have children, we might even go further and call it dereliction of parental duty.
I played tennis with a good friend last night (someone with children), and asked him his opinion about all this. He joked that he thinks there are only two times doors should be left locked: when one is inside or outside. He added that even leaving criminals aside, there are many mentally ill people wandering about. And one time, he told me he had come in and not locked the door because he was immediately returning out the back door from his kitchen to retrieve more groceries from his car. As he turned to do so, he discovered a disheveled stranger had walked into his kitchen behind him. He did not sense intoxication or malevolent intent, but it was obviously uncomfortable and he asked the man to leave. (Like me, he has no gates, guns, or canines to fall back on.) Fortunately, his children did not witness this; I think that would be rather disturbing to a child.
There have been a couple similar cases cited in this thread of oddballs walking into people’s homes and this spurring the occupants to change their policy about locking doors. I don’t understand why someone would need for this to happen first before they would simply undertake basic preventative measures (of which routinely locking the door is just one example; the other three might be even better in some ways).
Seriously? Because on a beautiful fall or summer day we keep our doors open until bedtime and lock up as we go to bed your children wouldn’t be safe in our house?
That is a very odd point of view in my book and yes.
I think it’s odd that people feel compelled to lock themselves in their homes at all times in the absence of real and credible threats. But live and learn, I guess.
So the people who have reported deranged strangers walking into their homes are not credible?
I only have one door, but it is locked when I’m home. If I had a back door, it would be locked as well. I think it would almost be more comforting to have it locked if you lived in a more rural area.
What an odd response. Wouldn’t that be a textbook example of a real and credible threat? Anyway, this is a silly conversation. You started it to challenge your preconceived idea that leaving a door unlocked when you get inside is atypical.
I think this thread shows it’s less atypical than you thought, and that people can do it for the basic reason that they don’t feel the need to (no philosophical stance or back up security, like a dog, needed).
So there you go. So, don’t worry your kids won’t have to sleepover in my risky, dangerous house.
Don’t forget to lock up this thread when you’re done.
Personally, if I lived somewhere that I couldn’t leave my doors open/unlocked without deranged strangers wandering in, I’d move rather than lock my doors.
Right, where there are fewer witnesses and police coverage. I see your point.
How would you determine such a thing? Live there until the first deranged stranger walks in, then move? Rinse, repeat?
:D. We live at the end of a long private gravel road with two other homes before ours. The private road branches off of a one block long dead-end road which branches off of a rural road. The house itself is surrounded by horse pasture. I have UPS and FedEx deliveries made to my work address since they have trouble finding us.
It is difficult to get here by car, and I’ve never seen someone walk by. A deranged stranger would need to be incredibly motivated to get close on foot, and the dogs would be happy to bury his/her bones.
Wow. Leaving the door unlocked isn’t nearly as risky as you think it is.
I grew up in a very small town where locking your door at night/when you weren’t home (let alone during the day, when you were home) was considered odd and overly paranoid behavior. That changed for our family when my mother acquired an ex husband with some nasty habits. (The only law enforcement was the sheriff’s department, which was not only located in another town but was also uninterested in family matters.)
After a few years, that situation cooled down, but in the meantime we had discovered that quite a few relatives considered knocking optional, and we continued to lock the doors to keep Uncle Whoever from wandering in uninvited. Since I had grown up locking the doors, it had become habit and I continued to do so after I moved out on my own. I have had a few experiences where people who had no business doing so tried to come inside, including in one instance a guy who couldn’t even qualify as an ex boyfriend–we’d gone out a couple of times months before–who showed up at my (hidden from the street) back door, unannounced, after dark.
So in my case it isn’t so much the local crime rate or strangers that makes me keep the doors locked at all times…It’s my damn goofy family and unreliable associates.
I feel that’s an improper use of the first person plural.
Lived in the suburbs and inner city of a relatively large city. Would never occur to me to not lock my doors at all times unless I’m going in and out repeatedly or just going a very short distance (e.g. I’m not gonna bother locking the door if I’m just getting the mail or taking the trash out, whether a house or an apartment, since I’m not going very far and will be back within a few minutes at most). Was raised to always lock all the doors, though nobody in my family has ever experienced a home invasion. It’s just common sense to me - why make it any easier for people to walk right on in?
An elderly lady I used to live next door to (house in the suburbs) would actually lock her back door behind her every time she went out to do the gardening, even though she was right there in the back yard the entire time and within sight of her back door. That’s a little bit excessive to me. I wouldn’t bother locking if I wasn’t going out of sight of the unlocked door. I think that’s probably more that she was old and needed to ensure she was grounded in the habit in case she forgot one day or something. If I stopped in to visit her, she would also lock the front door behind me as soon as she let me in, even though we were right there in the front room.
I live in moderately-sized city with a high-ish crime rate.
My backdoor is always locked.
I usually leave the front door unlocked when I am at home and moving about. I lock it at night before I go to bed.
Sometimes I’ll keep it unlocked when I leave to do a quick errand. But normally I lock it when I’m not at home.
I used to do that, then a guy messed up my car’s wiring trying to hotwire it.
The Saturn has an interesting security feature. If you use the “beeper” to lock the car, and then you unlock it with the key (as opposed to “beeping” it open), you cannot start it for half an hour. It’s an anti-theft feature. Once, when I first got my first Saturn (I’m on my second, and alas, I guess my last), I forgot this, and had to sit in the parking lot for half an hour before I could start the car.
As an add-on to my answer I should say that 99% of city houses in Peru have no back door to speak of. There is the the main door, maybe a garage door or a secondary door. Some garage doors have a door in them.
Also, most house cannot not lock the doors since doors have to be opended with a key, many/most not ven having a knob to turn.
I always thought it was common sense as well. It seems to not be as common as I would have thought, though I would still call it good sense.
Good call, although the combination of your experience and other things I have heard and read makes me think that there is a sort of small-town oppressiveness involved in some people’s outlook on this. To disapprove of people locking their doors is almost to assert their right to walk into your house without having to be invited in.
And around here at least, the smaller the town the bigger the busybodies. In fact, the newspaper here has weekly or biweekly columns in which each little town in the area has its goings-on chronicled by the local busybody in chief. Things like “The Smith family (listing all the members’ names) went to Kansas City for the weekend and shopped at XYZ Mall, went to the zoo, and ate out at Dave’s Barbecue”. Or “Verna and Roy Lundquist had visitors from out of town on Friday night”. Stuff like that.
Not for me, thanks. I’m going to live my own private life and keep my doors locked.
Well, locking the door to keep busybody relatives or acquaintances out makes sense to me and I would probably do that if Aunt Edna had a habit of letting herself in and making herself at home when she was in the neighbourhood. Or maybe I’d talk to her and tell her to stop. Or maybe I’d only lock the doors on days when I just couldn’t face the thought of Aunt Edna. Or maybe, if she was my favourite aunt, I’d put up with it, I don’t know.
What doesn’t make sense to me is locking the door because of fear of a random stranger intent on doing bodily harm coming into the house - the risk is just so small, or at least it is where I live. Driving is far far more dangerous and much more likely to get me killed than leaving the house unlocked during the day. I drive every day, knowing I may have an accident and be killed; or worse, cause someone else’s death. The convenience and freedom that comes with driving outweighs the very real risk of serious injury or death.
I like having the doors unlocked. I like having the doors open in the warmer weather. I like living that way. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, just like I’m willing to take the risks associated with driving. However, if things ever change and I feel the risk of having the doors unlocked is too high, I’ll start locking up. 