To feel scared in my own home?

[Colabottle10]

Last November we were burgled. During the daytime, I came home minutes after they'd fled.

We live in a rural village, it's a drive through as in not a dead end, and is a through route to the local town.

Took me a while to feel better about being in the house and slept with a shotgun under the bed for a long time.

The culprit hasn't been caught.

Friday just gone I noticed a car driving back and forth through the village very slowly with two men inside eyeing up all the houses. I saw it again tonight parked up at one end of the village. DH went for a drive to see if he could see it and found it just outside the village at the other end and stopped and asked if they were lost (man and woman this time). They said they were trying to get phone signal. I called 101 and logged it.

I feel scared again. I want to move.

Get a dog

We've been burgled, it was during the daytime between 8.30 am -12.15 pm and I know how you feel.

For a long time the fear didn't leave me, every time I walked into the house I'd be nervous and felt sick.

Do you love your house and your village?

Get your house assessed by a home security company so you can install preventative measures - to be honest where could you move to that is gauranteed burglar proof?

Oh and could you get a large dog too? Great company and added security.

My parents have a dog and they were still burgled.

You are aware that you breached your firearms licence OP?

Have you had security check- think we got this after we were burgled. We got extra window locks fitted and better door locks
Do you have neighbourhood watch?
I know its a horrible feeling......

I live in a top floor flat in Glasgow.
We were broken into, in the middle of the day with plenty of folk in the building. One of the neighbours had the builders in who left the secure entry front door propped open
My cats were in hiding (can't believe they didn't leave out the open front door) and it has taken three years for them to stop hiding at strange male Scottish voices (DP and I are English). I slept/sat in the living room with my replica gladius (not live but no one wants to be confronted with me, nekid, waving it at them at 3 am!). DP and I didn't leave each other alone in the house for two weeks.
But, five years later we're okay. I love my flat and have gotten past feeling so violated.

The cheapest and easiest thing to do would be to upgrade door and window locks since burglars look for the easiest point of entry. Bright outdoor lights might help as well, as long as they aren't going to bother your neighbours.

I was very security conscious when we bought our first home, we live in a city that is safer than average for all crimes except property crime, we have a higher than average rate - great! We replaced our front door with a much more solid reinforced door, we also replaced the door jam with stronger reinforced wood, made sure the front door was outwards opening not inward opening as it's harder bust in a door that is hinged to open outwards. We also replaced our back door a while later since the weakest point of entry is where burglars will head. It cost us a bit that I would have liked to use upgrading stuff in the house in our first year but peace of mind is priceless. Do a bit of internet research on all the small things you can do to make your home too much effort for burglars to hang around for. We have a burglar alarm as well, but tbh burglars know they still have time before any response shows up. You can't make your house a fortress (nor would you want to if firefighters can't break in in case of a fire or something), you just want to make you house less attractive to break into than your neighbours really (I know not exactly neighbourly but you can only worry about your own security.)

Is there a neighbourhood watch program in your area? You should notify them that people have been casing up homes. Maybe reach out to neighbours and start something like that unofficially for your street.

After numerous burglaries we now have a burglar alarm. I cannot sleep without one. I love it.

You can get alarms with panic buttons that are connected to the police.

I was burgled about 9 years ago.. I was in the (rented) house on my own - They came through the Kitchen sash window. I woke up, cleaned my teeth and looked out the bathroom window to see all my kitchen cleaning products on the grass.

Coming downstairs, the back door was open and my laptop and bag had been stolen - Thankfully my phone was upstairs, charging by my bed, so I phoned the police.....

... I was so shaken - What if they had come upstairs? :-(

My car then got broken into 7 times - My tyres were slashed, a love note placed on the window, it was keyed... the drivers door was crowbarred into and some CD's were taken out of my car and placed outside my front door (my car was parked 50 or so metres away from my house at this point).....

Thames Valley Police were shit... shitter than shit - Every time I phoned them, they didn't even bother coming out, the ONE time they did, the Officer said 'It's probably just drunken lads on their way to the pub' .. Oh? So that makes it OK then? The fact it's happened before doesn't have any bearing on it? The last 3 times I phoned them I even said 'I know you won't do anything, I'm just reporting it so your crime statistics look worse'

(Incidentally, my car also got broken into in Morriston in Wales, where I worked during the week and within 1 hour they'd sent a finger print unit round to my flat!!!!!!!! Swansea Police were bloody awesome)

I ended up parking my car a MILE away, at my friends house and walking up a massive hill in the dark as I couldn't sleep as every noise I was looking out the window and looking at my car - I wanted to honestly get an air rifle and shoot whoever it was.

Since 9 years ago, I've been really scared, even though I've moved 4 times and now live with my fiance, I still have a rather large knife in my bedroom. As soon as we completed on our house purchase and moved in on the 29th January I contacted ADT and now we've got an all singing, all dancing burglar alarm with Police response..... (and a big knife upstairs, just in case).

Yes, we had the local police security guys out. Alarm and window locks all fitted. We already have 2 big dogs.

At the time of the burglary, the PC that came out said if it made me feel safer to have the gun out, then do it. It wasn't loaded.

We rent. I don't love it, the area is nice though.

I'll try and be as polite as I can but I think your gun laws are very very bad. How can it ever be wrong for someone who has been burglarized to keep that gun in their room a last resort for protection in case it happens again? I suppose all I could suggest is get alarms fitted and superior quality locks.

I just had a look and it seems that you can carry a weapon in your own house for protection, but it can't be a gun as you seem to need a license which specifically forbids you from being able to have it ready in any way that it could realistically be used for self defence. Have you thought about keeping a baseball bat in your room? Not ideal but with how insanely restrictive your laws are, it might be the only option.

Ridiculous post about gun laws, if it were easier to have a gun the burglars would have them too, and the whole thing would be a thousand times more dangerous.
We'd also have the problem of a gun in your home being far more likely to kill a family member than a burglar.
Nobody aspires to be like America.

Hello Sylvia, you're just assuming a lot of things there. First you're assuming that the burglars would even have access to guns when a lot of them are already felons, let alone that they'd chose to take them along on something like this. But if your country feels that by disarming yourself the bad guys will also play along then that's ok, but why are you still feeling unsafe in your own homes? It's a pretty sorry state of affairs as they say.

Fluffy sorry to hear about your experience. It seems completely wrong that the police can tell you you aren't allowed to protect yourself, and also refuse to come and protect you. If they can't or aren't willing to come and protect you every time you feel in danger, they shouldn't be removing your own ability to do that. The police in my city couldn't respond instantly to a report of crime at my house so I need to be able to protect myself if god forbid I ever needed to, before they arrived.

Talk of knives, guns and baseball bats are all very well but what if the burglars get hold of them? Or kids in the house decided to take them to show their friends? Or you think you hear a noise, shoot, and it's a family member coming home late?

OP, I'm sorry about what happened to you. It happened to us over 20 years ago and it does make you feel insecure for a while. My thoughts are that while it was very unsettling, and your heart drops a bit when you open the front door for a while, they were there to remove property and not to attack the occupants.

We are now also rural and have a dog who is big and very barky towards strangers and I suspect that would put at least 90% of burglars off entering. I agree with most on here about reviewing your home security.

Peace of mind is hugely important in my opinion. If you don't feel better soon then it might be better for your peace of mind if you did move.

How can it ever be wrong for someone who has been burglarized to keep that gun in their room a last resort for protection in case it happens again? (sic)
Gun laws are there for a reason. The poor woman doesn't feel safe in her own home and all we can do is offer advice. This is not the thread for discussing how we feel about gun laws.
Other than that, 'burglarized', wtaf!

I think the point you're missing Chilled is that it would be very unlikely that someone would break into your home with a fire arm in the UK, so for you to have a loaded gun by your bed just in case would be un-warranted in 99.9% of all break ins and also a chargable offence if anyone was harmed.

Hey kidnapped. Quite a lot of what ifs there. So let me pose another one. What if a burglar decides to harm you, or rape you, and you aren't able to do anything because you're unarmed? Those sorts of eventualities need to be considered too. I personally feel that a burglar who would grab a weapon off me is a burglar who would already intend to harm me no matter what. So I keep my pistol in my room in the event that, hopefully won't happen, but if it does, I can put down a threat without needing outside help. Kids in the house taking my carry weapon to show their friends isn't an issue because I live alone at the moment, and whenever I have guests I make double sure I've locked my room so there won't be any curiosity-driven accidents.

A dog is (usually) always a deterrent, he doesn't even need to be a vicious or violent dog. If I'm a burglar I don't know that the huge dog I've spotted in your yard is actually just a big cutey who will do nothing more than lick me to death, I just see a huge animal with teeth and decide to pick a different target.

Chilled you're talking bollocks. Why wouldn't criminals have access to guns...they are criminals? If you have a gun you aren't going to protect yourself from a burglar, you are going to get yourself killed. Or your kids will shoot you or each other more likely.
What a joke, an American judging UK gun laws! I think wed all rather stick with what we have thanks, a murder rate for the entire country that is less than a small American city.

chilled in this country the average, law abiding member of the public isn't allowed to keep a gun at home for protection.

Your argument is irrelevant on this thread.

Awade just because the intruder is unarmed doesn't mean you would be unwarranted to use a gun to stop the robbery. By use I don't necessarily mean shoot, just either making them leave, or holding them until the cops arrive.

Dawn it's what I'd refer to a burglary as in the past tense "my friend was burglarized last week". I guess you don't use that word over there?

chilled, the OP has already said that she is scared.

Do you think that your posts about rape and pistols are helping her to feel less scared?

Maybe start a new thread about gun laws if you wish.

Really criminals couldn't get hold of a gun?
So all the drive by shootings in the States for example are committed by legal guns?
The few gun crimes in the UK committed by legally owned guns?
Don't be daft. These are crimes committed by criminal with illegal guns.

I'm only giving an opinion on your gun laws because I think it's contributed to making people like the OP feel as unsafe as they do in their own home. She said she kept a shotgun under her bed to feel more secure, and then someone said that would be a breach of her gun license conditions. I was merely offering my own opinion that it's not right for your laws to be so restrictive that the OP isn't allowed to defend herself in her own home.

An American has as much right to comment on UK gun laws as any English person does to comment on American gun laws, and I've seen quite a few of those make comments about our system, so I feel it fair that if I think a law you have is wrong, I'll say what I honestly think about it. If you'd rather stick to what you have, feeling unsafe in your own homes, then that's your choice. I am not a citizen of England so I have no right to petition for change to the laws, your parliament does not represent me. That doesn't forbid me from expressing an opinion about laws I think are pretty silly though. I'm sorry if I caused this to go a little bit of topic OP, the main advise I would give if my preferred advice isn't available, is to try and "harden" the house as much as possible. Superior quality locks, alarms, particularly visible alarms to act as a deterrent. Don't buy those fake alarm sets because criminals can tell the difference, the genuine ones are more expensive but definitely worth it.

At the end of the day you can't completely secure your house, but burglars generally go after the easiest target, the lowest hanging fruit. If you are the only house in the street without any kind of visible alarm, you are the lowest hanging fruit. Just do what you can to make yourself appear a harder target than another house. Some good tips here modernsurvivalblog.com/security/21-things-your-burglar-wont-tell-you/ you've already got part of number 15 nailed:

15. The two things I hate most: loud dogs and nosy neighbors.