You know, sometimes I think I should find a different place to live. Approximately an hour ago (so make it about 12:30 AM local time), I’m woken up by more banging. At first, I’m like “Shit, don’t be the cops again.” Hoping that it’s just my neighbors coming in late and closing the car door loudly a dozen times or so, I don’t get up until I heard a crash. This, it turns out, was a guy who decided this would be the perfect time to break one of my living room windows–not the big middle one, but one of the smaller side windows. Joke was on him, though, as his way was fairly effectively blocked at first by a bookshelf containing a speaker and about half my DVD collection. I pull the blinds away from the window and say hello to my new bare-chested, probably drunk acquaintance. I don’t even have to call the cops, because as I’m trying to figure out what to say to him other than “Good morning” I see three cruisers about to pull onto the property. This, of course, means that this wonderful specimen of youth had already done something worth being chased by not only just one set of cops but by three cruisers. Well, the cops cuff him, take a report from me, and I go looking for a piece of plywood and, of course, to post the whole thing on the SDMB.
So anyway, I found a quarter-inch piece of particleboard that ought to fit the window. Anyone got any advice on how to board it up?
Hmmm…maybe I’ll finally go get that shotgun I’ve wanted since I was 16.
You need to get your priorities in order, asterion. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Seriously, though; it’s a good job you came through it unscathed. Shame about the abode.
Only time I had to board something up, Dad and I just used a thick piece of plywood and some very large nails. A whole lot of nails. Dad said he hoped that would dissuade any would-be thieves.
Shotgun? Maybe. I can see your point. Still how would you handle shooting someone. If you think you’ll be OK with that, don’t forget one of those laser aiming things.
I want a shotgun for target practice and only target practice and have for years. In any case, even if I had had it, I probably wouldn’t’ve grabbed it. Even if I had grabbed it, it wouldn’t’ve be loaded, at least not at first. And in this case, shooting the guy wouldn’t have been self-defense but straight-up murder, so there was no way I would’ve pulled the trigger.
Seriously, are there any tricks to boarding up a window? I need to go to the store and get something bigger to replace the thing I put in temporarily to make it through the night and my 8:30 class this morning. I don’t have a saw to cut a whole sheet of plywood and would prefer not to put a dozen nail holes in the outside of the house. At least this is wood-frame construction and not adobe, so replacing the window should be much easier.
Heh. This story reminds me of what happened when I tried to get into my grandmother’s house.
She’d asked me to go over and water her plants while she was on a trip. I did, but I locked my keys inside after setting the burglar alarm. Well, I thought, no big deal. I’d just crawl through a window. When you open the door, the alarm gives a warning beep for thirty seconds until you punch in the code. I assumed it would do the same thing if a window were opened. I assumed wrong.
The window is set about six feet from the ground, so I got a chair to assist me in my climb. I opened the window and the alarm started to blare. Panicked, I jumped and tried to pull myself up into the window, but lacking upper-body strength, it was extremely difficult. The neighbors came out to stare and point.
When the cops arrived, I was hanging half-in-half-out of the window, with my ass up in the air. That took a lot of explaining, I tell ya.
I am not suggesting you should have shot the guy, but there are few things more useless than an unloaded gun.
Also, most of the big box building supply stores will cut a sheet of plywood to any size you need. They will still charge you for the whole sheet, so have them cut the rest to shelf size. We all need more shelves, right?
Unloaded for storage. It would take me a minute to load a couple shells. Unless you can come up with a reason that I should store a gun loaded and with the safety on instead of unloaded.
And look, as I said, even if I had had something, I probably wouldn’t have got it out in the first place. I should’ve just avoided that last comment in the first place.
If you’re renting, talk to the landlord if at all possible before you go banging holes in stuff.
If you own, call around to glass repair companies to see how quickly you can get someone out there to replace the windowpane. If they can be there later today, it might make more sense just to skip the plywood stage.
How sucky a shot does one have to be to need to practice with a shotgun? Isn’t the idea that you pretty much can’t miss as long as you’re holding it by the right end?
Yeah, then they pull out their LOADED gun, and you just escalated something beyond your ability to deal with it. Bottom line is guns are not for scaring people. If you pull one on somebody you better be prepared to kill them. If you are not prepaed to do that then you have no business pointing a gun at someone.
Quite. And if I had a loaded gun pointed at someone and they made a move to pull out their own gun, I’d fire. I’d probably have nightmares afterwards, though.
At close range, a shotgun has a pattern the size of a large fist. At full effective spread, it’s maybe 1-2’ across in diameter. So, yeah, you can miss, easily.
Target practice as in skeet shooting or sporting clays. At the distances inside my house, there is no way I could miss. When the target is forty feet away and moving, you’ve got to learn to lead the target.
Which is exactly why I have never seriously thought about getting one for home defense. I strongly believe in what you just said. As I said, I looked at the situation first without a firearm and would have done the same even if I had one in the house. Honestly, I don’t know if I could kill a man. I hope never to have to find out. As I said, I wasn’t thinking all that clearly when I posted the OP or my first reply (I got about three hours of sleep last night as a result.)
I rent. As I kinda said, I put a 1/4" piece of particleboard on the inside of the windowframe (that is, inside the house) and just taped it in place with some clear packing tape. I went outside this morning and indeed, pushing on it makes it give way. I also called my landlady this morning after getting back from my 8:30 class, just a few minutes ago in fact, and am waiting for her to get off the phone with her insurance company and call me back. I’ve gotta go back by 1:30 for another class, so I hope we get this sorted out within an hour so I can get back to either my textbook or the lab. If this was a different window and not one of the ones facing the street, I wouldn’t be in quite such a hurry to either get it boarded up or replaced.
I can think of few things more dangerous to do than to carry an unloaded weapon into a confrontation. That would be a really bad thing to do. Don’t even consider it.
Burglars aren’t looking for armed confrontation. They will usually run whether your brandished gun is loaded or not. Even if they suspect your weapon is not loaded, they’d rather not find out for sure.
It would sure suck if you confronted one of the anomalous ones who do carry.
I think that the best general rule is that if one is willing to bring out a gun, make sure it is loaded: You can always choose not to fire a loaded weapon. It’s much harder to fire an unloaded weapon, if the situation warrants such an action.
My point is, though, there a lots of things “more useless than an unloaded gun” when investigating noises that go bump in the night. The hardcover book you’ve been reading is one. A bedside vibrator, your boot or a TV remote - all things easily reached yet more useless. At least an empty can can be used like a bat or brass knuckles.