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.

If you feel unsafe in your own home, adding something much more dangerous into the situation is the most idiotic suggestion possible.

You might as well tell a drowning man to dive deeper.

Nothing wrong with our laws.
Our gun laws stop children walking into school and shooting their peers.
Our gun laws stop young children from accidentally shooting their siblings.
in the USA in one year, 8,775 shootings compared to 85 in the Uk.
That's a hell of a lot of unresponsible gun owners.

I like the big dog approach there is nothing like the loyalty of a pooch, when I had my doberman, I was woken by a noise in the kitchen and my dog had cornered a burglar who was terrified about being bitten again.

The police were lovely and one of them brought me a beware of the dog sign, just in case the burglar decided to sue for being munched.

@ Chilled: Probably not best for here, most brits generally just don't get gun culture, personally I feel much safer when I am overseas and I have access to my guns then when I am in the UK, which thankfully is not that often these days.

We have the exact same laws you do regarding going into a school and shooting kids. Namely, we don't allow it. But some people do it anyway, and as correctly pointed out, most of the crime happens with illegally acquired guns, so changing a law would have no effect on it.

Sylvia your comparison with telling a drowning man to dive deeper is ridiculous. You are introducing something that can help save the person from danger, so the accurate comparison is telling a drowning man to grab onto a life jacket you've thrown towards him.

I get it, I know that even the suggestion of citizens carrying weapons is a taboo topic but I felt I just had to say something when the first reply to the topic was that the OP having a gun under her bed to feel safe was possibly a crime. I'd like to have enough faith in the criminal justice system to believe that your comment about the burglar possibly suing for being bitten is a joke but I'm not sure I want to pull that thread.

It doesn't even matter if a dog is vicious or willing to attack a burglar. They just see a big scary animal barking at them and assume the worst.

No you're not. A gun doesnt save you frim danger it puts you in danger. Seriously, don't you understand simple numbers? In the us lits if innocent people, including children, are shot, injured or killed by guns. In the UK, almost none.

We don't want guns. We're not so fucking stupid as to arm the criminals OR our children. You do both. And you can keep it. Its a moronic system supported by idiots. Don't wish your shit on us.

OP how did it make you feel safer if it wasn't loaded? I'm assuming the pc who told you it was ok wasn't your local fire arms officer as I can't believe they would ever say that was ok

Chilled I can say I am quite happy knowing that I live in a civilised country and see it as a mark of that civilisation that we don't routinely have to walk around armed to the teeth.
Also when i send my children to school the chance crazed nut job with a high powered semi automatic weapon is not going to burst in an murder everybody, the same goes for church and when I go to the cinema. keep you gun laws and your attitude to guns we don't want it here.

Violent death rates in UK vs USA? The day we get gun laws like the US (or most other laws to be honest) is the day I move. The risk of an armed intruder here is minimal.

Sylvia, I understand simple numbers just fine. It's already illegal to go into a school and shoot people, a lot of the English people I see talking about our gun laws have a naive belief that if we banned them, the shootings would stop. It's already illegal to go into a school and shoot people, making it illegal again isn't going to change anything.

Awade, no one I know walks around "armed to the teeth" either. I consider the community I live in pretty civilized, we have a low crime rate and people are generally very friendly and welcoming. The fact a lot of us are armed doesn't make us any less civilized than you, it just means we are prepared in case the worst happens.

Flibberti, my guess is that the OP felt safer because even though she knew it was unloaded, a burglar wouldn't. It goes against everything I've been taught to draw a gun on someone without being prepared to use it if necessary, but this might be the one exception. If the burglar seems intent on hurting you, I guess it can't hurt to try and bluff him with an unloaded gun. At least that's what I think the OP's angle was, maybe she could confirm?

I'm in a state in the US where I could perfectly legally buy and own a gun, and keep it under my bed in case I get burgled.

I don't though, because I'm not that stupid...

Other than that, 'burglarized', wtaf!

You know how you say 'vandalized' rather than 'vandalled'?

Americans say 'burglarized' rather than 'burgled'.

Chilled I hate to burst your bubble but there was a petition to allow people to bring weapons into the the Republican conference in July?
and as for these nut jobs.
www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/guns-target-open-carry-texas
The above only begs the question what the fuck is wrong with you people.
Again I'm happy for the gun laws in the UK to stay the way they are if the alternative is the American model of bat-shit insanity.

It's already illegal to go into a school and shoot people, making it illegal again isn't going to change anything

This is a self-serving, perverse argument. But that's what is to be expected from the gun lobbyists.

OP, I'm so sorry this has happened to you, and that your thread has been so selfishly derailed to boot.

Folks, did we miss the bit where the OP said she was scared?

Chilled please learn the difference between England and the UK and English people and British people. It's really annoying for people from the rest of the UK to read - possibly more annoying than wishing your ridiculous gun laws on us.

Op getting back to your original question. It seems you have done everything you can with regards to making your home safer. Have you considered seeing someone about trying to get over what happened to you? Break ins can be very traumatic as toy know.

My original post was directly in response to her saying she felt scared, I simply can't believe that you have laws which cause this level of fear among your society, and yet some of you still defend those laws. Multivac, if making it illegal to murder people is "self serving" then I'll proudly admit to that.

Actually the fact that you are armed DOES make you less civilised than us. The fact that your guns kill your own children more often than burglars makes you less civilised, and the fact that you are so blind to the reality that you think we should be more like you means you are clearly also less intelligent.

OP, you can instantly feel a lot safer just by reminding yourself that you aren't in America, but the UK, where a burglar might steal your TV but isn't going to shoot you.

When I visited Miami I felt very unsafe after hearing nearly everyone had guns. Guns make me feel less safe not more safe.

So are you now implying that because we don't want gun laws, that it's a taboo subject for us?

It couldn't possibly be because as other countries that let their citizens be armed show, gun crime is a lot higher?

I, like others are happy to live in a society that we don't have to be armed to feel safe. I don't live with that thought in the back of my head, that today could be the day some kid walks into school and shoots everyone. Your country may not allow this to happen legally, but by arming citizens and having lax laws, you all who support the right to arm allow this to happen. If the right to arm lot didn't approve of these mass shootings, they would be campaigning to tighten up the gun laws surely?

When we have home invaders in this country, generally they are not armed, because they know the chances of the occupant being armed is low. Allow all the be armed, and you soon have a huge problem.

it also seems your problem is getting worse. The figure I put was for 2002. in 2013, over 84 thousand non-fatal injuries. Over 11 thousand deaths. 505 accidental gun discharge deaths. a further 300 thousand + as a result of fire arm related to deaths. These figures btw don't include shootings from Law enforcement, because these figures are not kept.
Now compare 2013 gun crime in the UK - 5,094 total, including law enforcement shootings. Compared to the 150,596 excluding law enforcement gun crime in the USA. You have to ask, how many shootings would there have been in the USA if citizens didn't have the right to bare arms?

Urgh this is so horrible what you must be going through fuking hate people who rob others its it shame cause in this country you cannot even defend yourself or you will be arrested

And you were right to report hope u took the number plate too

Zombie is an American citizen. She lived in Virginia for 30 years. She moved to the UK 33 years ago.

She much prefers living in a country with strict gun control laws. That isn't a conclusion she came to after coming here to live. At the ripe old age of 11 (so in 1963) she wrote to her local newspaper putting forth her view that gun control laws should be introduced.

Chilled does not speak for all Americans.

I think we're just as civilized as you, but everyone's allowed an opinion. We don't victim blame the burglarized person, we say they are completely within their rights to feel secure in their own home. But it seems I'm going to be continually jumped on for not sharing the majority view on guns, so I'll put that to one side right now.

KayTee87, she definitely seems to have done everything. If weapons aren't an option, then all I would suggest is hardening the house, get a good alarm system, putting superior quality locks on the door if the house didn't already have them, and she said she already got the local cop guy to come round and advise her and get stuff fitted. Don't think there's anything else that can be done.

The slow car checking out all the houses does sound suspicious to me OP, but as your husband has gone out and spoken to them it will probably make them reluctant to do anything. Their faces are known, your guard is up. If I was a burglar I wouldn't want to operate in an area where I knew that someone was suspicious of me and had seen my face and (for all I know) taking a note of my car details and maybe even photographed me. It would just be too risky for me.