Reply #93: My daughter grew up in Tampa Florida ...

[spin]

and the area of Tampa where we lived had its share of gangs and crime.

Two houses down, a neighbor's son ran one of the local gangs. Once someone tried a drive by shooting at his home but only managed to hit a tree and the porch steps. This gang leader ended up in prison for several years after he decided to kill his girl friend by shooting her in the head with a .38 snub nosed revolver. He claimed it was an accident and the witnesses were too frightened to testify against him in court.

There were always firearms in our home and my daughter was trained in how to use them. In fact she used a large caliber S&W revolver to stop an intruder breaking into our home when she was seventeen or eighteen. Fortunately, she didn't have to shoot the intruder. She pointed the big revolver at him and he ran.

Legal firearm ownership was fairly common in our neighborhood. The neighbor across the street had an extensive gun collection.

Once during the afternoon my wife noticed that five guys in their late teens and early twenties were breaking into his home and were carrying his gun collection over a chain link fence to the carport of the next door neighbor.

My wife woke me up. I was working the graveyard shift and slept during the day. I told her to call the police and did something fairly stupid as I was still half asleep. I left my house and ran across the street yelling at the top of my voice (which I call my Geronimo tactic). I left my firearm behind.

I made so much noise that a neighbor four houses down the street looked out her window to find out what was happening and saw two guys running down the street.

I made it as far as the carport when I slipped on an oil slick left on the concrete by the neighbor's old Volkswagen. I ended up on my ass and realized that it was a good place to stay as a bunch of rifles, handguns and an archery set were setting there and my chances of catching one of the robbers was slim.

One of my neighbor's guns was stolen, but it was a very cheap nickel plated .22 caliber revolver. His priced .45 auto was lying in the carport with a round stove piped in the chamber. It is possible that when I started to run across the street, one of the robbers attempted to chamber a round in the .45 and failed. Had he succeed, I might have been shot.

Like I said, it was a stupid thing to do but it worked.

It turned out that gun owner's next door neighbor had a daughter who told her boyfriend about the gun collection. She was close friends with the gun owner and his family until the incident.

Interestingly enough, my neighbor had two big Doberman Pinscher dogs in his yard. Before the break in he would often brag about how they were "trained watch dogs." However, the neighbor's daughter, who knew the dogs well, had been able to keep them calm when her boyfriend's crew was busting into the home by breaking a side window.

I found it humorous that the two dogs would not let the police enter the yard when they arrived.

The police immediately knew who was involved in the heist and I remember a parent pulling up and talking to the cops trying to convince them that his son could not have been involved. The cop told me, "They always say that."

I got a great steak dinner out of the deal which was my gun owning neighbor's method of thanking me.

He invested in a gun safe after the incident.