I know the feeling
Back in September I came home from work, opened the front door and wasn't greeted by the back of my big lcd tv. Everything was slid around and all over the place, no Playstation 3 on the coffee table, everything thrown all over in my bedroom, bedroom window open with a cool breeze blowing in. I had one of those cheap door alarms on my back door, it had gone off and my big tv was sitting by the door ($10.00 alarm saved a $1500.00 tv)
I always locked up my shotgun before I left for work in the morning, of course this was the one morning I hadn't because I woke up a little late rushed out the door. Shotgun and ammo was gone.
The scary part was that I didn't fully comprehend what had happened until after I had walked into the house looking around, I could have totally been blasted with my own gun before I even realized what I was doing.
Anyway I called the cops, they came and took a report, dusted for prints and all that and left. About an hour, hour and a half later while I was standing in my mess of a bedroom trying to figure out what else was missing I heard my neighbor yelling to his wife "call the cops, those are the ones who broke into the guys house!"
The punks had had stashed the bigger items, the shotgun and my smaller tv in an empty house right across the street from my bedroom. When they came back to get the stuff, my neighbor saw them and went running after them while his wife called the police, they ran down the road with my tv and my shotgun in it's case. They ditched the tv in front of some house but somebody with a car picked them up with the gun. The Sheriff's Department was there full blast, helicopter, dogs and all within minutes. They caught the punks and returned half of my things to me (there is still about $900.00 worth of my belongings missing) Most importantly, they recovered my gun.
From what I understand 3 teenagers broke in, apparently one of them had terrorized enough people already to actually do some time in JDC or whatever. I guess the other two weren't in very long, exactly 2 months later one of the punks who had gotten off came back with 2 more guys for my big tv. They already knew my house so they didn't mess with the backdoor, they just smashed my entire window pane out and I guess somehow shoved the tv threw. A neighbor heard my recently installed crappy window alarm going off and glass breaking and called the cops who hunted down and apprehended all 3 once again. I got a call at work "we have your tv at the station, your house was robbed again"
They had tried and failed to defeat my gun lock.
I was renting the place and my lease was almost over so I couldn't really do too much with beefing up security, needless to say .......I moved.
I learned many valuable lessons from this experience. Including a big confirmation of something I already knew, most criminals are stupid and reckless beyond what a normal person can comprehend. You can't put anything past them or realistically apply any sort of "ok if I were them I would do this and not do this", they aren't you.
I've always been a pretty streetsmart, look over my shoulder kind of guy. I try to plan ahead and prevent so I don't have to regret things later. I guess unfortunately there are some things you don't fully see the importance of and truly take seriously until you are confronted with a situation and find yourself lacking. Why did I walk into the house, why didn't I keep the serial numbers of my belongings filed away somewhere, are they gonna be able to get into my laptop and use my credit card info from some website I buy stuff from? How could I forget to lock the gun up? (I lived by myself so locking the gun was primarily in case someone broke in)
And of course, why didn't I just go and do what I had to do to get my concealed carry permit?
