Sign of the times it seems - property crime

appears to be on the rise here in Charlotte...

My wife told me that one or our friends at church had a friend get robbed at gunpoint at 8:30pm in the parking lot of a nice shopping center in a nice part of town. Not to mention several rashes of neighborhood property crimes.

Not encouraging at all... keep your eyes open and aware of your surroundings and it would not be a bad time to consider going over your home security preparations.

I'm sorry to hear this, Gatsby. I hope your friend wasn't injured.

I've recently made investmensts in security DVR technology as well as personal self defense devices for this reason.

Its getting out of control around Detroit. I'm getting a CCW soon. My GF works nights at Fairlane Mall and I worry about her walking out to her car at night.

Sorry to hear about your friends, I hope they're okay.

Bad people don't stay in the bad part of town. Much more lucrative to rob people in more successful neighborhoods.

My wife and I both have concealed handgun licenses and carry whenever we leave the house. It's saved our bacon at least twice, and practice is FUN.

:buddies:

A friend of mine works in a store nearby, he said someone stole his backback from behind the counter the other day. More annoying, someone stole a dog from the shopkeeper across the street from him and it turned up dead in a garbage can near another pet store in town. There's some weasel on the loose. :thumbsdow

It does make you think about things in a different way. Thankfully our friends handed over their wallets and the perps ran away - nothing but credit cards which were easily cancelled. I do need to put together a quick list of cards my wife and I carry so that in similar circumstances we can cancel them rapidly.

I took the NC training course for my CCW - and enjoy target shooting quite a bit but never actually applied for my permit. I've been thinking pretty seriously about finally applying. I don't currently have any firearms in the house - my wife is a bit uncomfortable and when we had kids I sold off my dads old pistols (which wasn't that hard since in all honesty none of them really fit my hand very well, although I do miss the Ruger MkII which was a lot of fun to plink with). It will take some investment as I'll only have long arms or pistols in the house if I can properly secure them (but in a manner that's fast enough to deploy if need be).

My wife sent me an email from the HOA that there was an attempted break in last week on the street which parallels ours - perps thought no one was at home and ran when they realized there were people inside after kicking the door in.

I hope my two 80 pound black labs will serve as something of a deterrent - the larger one in particular is an excellent guard dog in terms of making noise - he growls at strangers in the yard and has a deep, loud bark. The old one is less reliable since he's going deaf but he lets out a deep bark when the younger one stirs him up.