For the win!
What is your "under the mattress" firearm?
- Thread starter TopJimi
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Hi, Tikka, he killed the victim, didn't he?
My German Shepherd reacts much faster than me. Especially, when I am sleeping. This is based on an occurrence. I do have an avenue of assets for protection.I bought a S&W Shield in 9mm last summer from my daughters B.F. Got the lightly used (very lightly) 4 yr old gun, 100 rounds, a soft case, and 2 unused holsters for $300. I think that was a great deal! Anyway.....
A couple weeks ago, I heard some noise in the wee hours while lying awake, and it got me thinking. I have that 9mm under the mattress, and I have taken it out and shot it a few times, but, in the dark, in a stressful situation, I'm not sure that I could find the right button to chamber a round, and get the safety off in a timely manner. So, I got the old Ruger single six in 22 mag and put it in the 9mm place. With the Ruger, all I gotta do is, pull it out of the holster, pull the hammer back and POW!!! If needed.
No outsider would dare enter my home with Stinkerella and the rocket surgeon here on guard here by the door.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
You live in Northern Ontario though, conclusions are easily drawn from the safety of one's echo chamber. Down here in Southern Ontario the local police department has advised a local hamlet to work on constructing neighbourhood watch programs because of a dramatic rise in crime. We are having vehicles broken into every night in town. We had an elderly woman scared to death last week when a man had climbed her front porch and was trying to enter her house via the bedroom window. The addiction problems are out of control and driving people already with nothing to lose to do more and and more dangerous things in order to obtain the money to feed their habit. Theft is rampant, but the uptick in B&E activity is the real concern and many of these people are armed, though that's mostly with knives.
The county's approach appears to be just to give these people clean needles and safe injection sites so they don't OD, which does nothing to stop them from stealing to feed that habit.
There's one guy, who stole my son's bike, who has been charged FOURTY TIMES. He was arrested, with multiple knives on him, a few weeks ago and charged once again with a laundry list of offences including the bike theft and was actually put behind bars this time for a stint. Most of these people get brought in, charged, and released, and they immediately go out and offend again. The police chief has even commented on the issue stating that they are arresting the same pool of people time and time again.
Is it unlikely that one of these druggies will break into my house? Yes. Statistically the odds are low even given the rash of crime happening locally in this ~100K person town. But, if an armed intruder were to break in, I'd at least like the option of fighting the charges vs somebody in my family getting seriously injured or killed because this guy wanted cash to feed his addiction, the withdrawal from which could drive said individual to do pretty much anything.
I live in the nickel city, the drug problem is not confined to parts south of the province.
The drug problem is something we need to deal with.
Until we start putting people in hospitals and treatment programs poeple are going to die, commit crimes and repeat the cycle. No one wants a kid with a drug problem, no kid wants to grow to be a junkie, its heart breaking. I have a first hand experience with this and I kick myself every day and wonder what I could have done to change things for him. Without sounding like a broken record I think its a societal problem. We have a sick screwed up society, because secure well adjusted people do not grow up and do these things.
The drug problem is something we need to deal with.
Until we start putting people in hospitals and treatment programs poeple are going to die, commit crimes and repeat the cycle. No one wants a kid with a drug problem, no kid wants to grow to be a junkie, its heart breaking. I have a first hand experience with this and I kick myself every day and wonder what I could have done to change things for him. Without sounding like a broken record I think its a societal problem. We have a sick screwed up society, because secure well adjusted people do not grow up and do these things.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Ahhh, Sudbury! My parents lived in Thunder Bay for a while when I was an infant, I figured you were more up that way when I saw "Northern Ontario".
Yes, the addiction problem is the root issue. People can prepare themselves for home invaders but that does nothing to address the root cause. As an individual, I am not able to change the course of these's people's lives, so my approach is reactive in the sense of "just in case". As a society, we need to focus on mental health, which I believe is the primary driver to drug addiction. I specifically mention drug addiction because I don't recall hearing stories of alcoholics breaking into people's houses so they can hit the LCBO for a bottle of Canadian Club, this is primarily a drug addiction problem, more specifically opiate addiction but also, to a lesser extent, crack, meth...etc.
There will always be a segment of people who believe that life is too short to waste it by being sober. Only a tiny number addicts are amenable to treatment before they reach the point where it becomes too painful to continue with their addition lifestyle, so more mental health care does nothing unless combined with tough law enforcement. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, so please forgive my rant.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
No, it's fine, it's a valuable topic to talk about.
This will be unpopular, but this has previously been a self-correcting problem. Prior to safe injection sites, widely available naloxone kits and clean needle dispensaries these people would routinely OD and die. Now that we've put support systems in place we've done nothing to solve the addiction issue but we've allowed the numbers to greatly increase, which in turn results in more funding and attention being directed toward those services. Opiate addiction treatment through methadone is/was a big thing here locally, we have like 5 or 6 methadone clinics. But of course this is only for people who are getting treatment. When these clinics came in the number of addicted and homeless appeared to increase dramatically and I expect a large portion fall off the wagon and go right back to illegal drugs and then theft to support it, hence the dramatic increase in crime.
Have you noticed at the LCBO they had to hire security? Maybe where your at this was the norm, I don't know because I try never to go any further south than 9th line. But up here they hires security at the beer store to. People are coming in and trying to grab and run with booze, that never happened before I can recall. And every street corner has a pan handler on it now, again this is not something I saw 20 years ago.
Its a decline in society and even our standard or living I think that its now an easier living to pan handle than get a real job. Some might think that when this covid thing ends we will see the security disappear again, but they said in 09 that the jobs would come back and they didn't. Seems to me when the Financial crisis hit the bums really started to come out o the wood work and that's when I began to see the needles. Before that it was .com crash, and gulf war 2 when I first started to see the bums at all. When I really think about it is was 92 when the economy was bad that the homeless troubles began and it was right in your face.
We gradual got used to this and treated it like it was normal after a while, we lived in the richest country with a productive free market economy with a broadest safety net, medicare, pensions, social programs,and we thought non of this was our problem.
Its something those people do to themselves....
Well I am not so sure of that anymore
Each Crisis is worst than the last.
I thought inflation and the oil crisis with sky high interest rates was bad...
Then came black Friday then recession.
Then the .com and recession that followed
The cycles of crashes and reveries that weren't really much of a recovery, and each one worse than the last. I am not really surprised things are as messed up as they are. But violent crime and crime statistics ( grudgingly I agree with you about the petty crime ) went the other way. The hollow recoveries and gov cut backs have lead us to a point now where nothing feels normal and secure.
I don't know, but I think throwing more people into the streets and watching whats happening AND THEN blaming the people that fell through the cracks is productive or solving anything.
I watched a girl up the road from me grow from a toddler to a drug addict all because she really liked those pills from the dentist, they were cheap to buy on the street. Lots of heart break for her parents to get her clean and back on her feet but at least she's not dead. I am not sure your self correction theory is a sound one at least not in the eyes of parent who has a kid with a drug problem.
Maybe tough love works for some but Fentenol or what ever they buy now kills some just because its bad dope. Why are people taking all these drugs? I bet half the young guys I work with could not piss clean. You know they are not married few have kids and all the trappings of a normal middle class family and I think that's part of the reason they are taking drugs.
Another guy I worked with is well past retirement age!!!
He is working to raise his grand kids because his daughter has a drug problem... *** is up with that?
We're turnign into a society of screwed up people and old people working to try and compensate for the screwed up kids...
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OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
We've always had security in the "less desirable" LCBO locations to prevent theft. The Beer Store seems to have avoided that requirement unless it exists at the ones that I haven't frequented. There's a homeless congregation near the one beside the fire station (right across from one of the methadone clinics) that has been there for many, many years. They don't seem to do much more than beg outside the store from what I recall.
The other LCBO stores have indeed got security now, but the main function seems to be to control how many people are inside the store at any given time and that people sanitize and wear a mask, that's all I've ever seen them do, though I haven't been in several months now.
Yes, we have seen an increase in the number of pan handlers and street beggars/corner beggars. Some of these long pre-date COVID and are actually organized groups around here, which I mentioned in another thread. Others appear to have been more recent arrivals.
The situation is most definitely declining. Our parks are full of needles, people are afraid to let their kids play and children have in fact stumbled across and been pricked by them, as have pets being walked, so it is a legitimate concern.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
It wasn't meant as a theory in terms of being compassionate, simply that the deaths kept the overall numbers down, which corrective actions have curbed. I'm not advocating letting them die, just pointing out that with the death rate previously being higher before, that the problem had a degree of self-correction built-in.
Well before the last big recession I watch a lot of guys my age and older all hopped up on pain meds and other pills so they could work long hours to make more money to pay for second houses and second wives. This was before the age of the piss test every time someone got hurt. Now the doctors are stingy with the pills and that's forcing a lot of these functional train wrecks onto the street drugs I think.
I don't think you lack compassion, but these are very complicated problems.
I came here to talk about oil filters and I am discussing the worlds problems.
Man we have фокін problems !!!!!
Well beyond poverty, crime, drugs ect
The icecaps are melting the plastic won't go away and shear volume of all the stuff we made outweighs all the living things on earth.
Our problems are of our own making, people problems, too many people too many problems.
i do have a bedside gun. here is why. i cannot wring my hands over how crime or danger comes to be in any era or place. i cannot be held responsible for fixing all of society’s ills or ridding the world of predators. i can live a decent, honorable life and show my kids how to do the same. i can take all prudent steps to be safe in where and how i live. i can responsibly choose to own firearms in a country where it is (still) a lawabiding citizen’s god given, constitutionally enumerated, inalienable right. i like to sleep well.
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Well no one brought up the idea they are sleep aids before. If that works I sanction its use.
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