Question: couldn't you do something roughly like weatherbill, by trading some kind of agricultural futures? Maybe you'd only be betting-on/hedging-against severe weather in that case, but still...
I knew a guy whose home was invaded. He and his wife were tied up in the bedroom, and while the robbers searched the house he untied himself and his wife, jumped out the second-story window, and ran down the street to a phone and called the cops. In the meantime his wife climbed up to the peak of the roof and sat there screaming, so all the neighbors called the cops too.
So that's what you do. You can send me the $800 via Paypal.
But how do you untie yourself? That seems like the trick. I want a refund.
You learn that in the advanced class, which is also $800.
I suppose "a good chance" is a relatively flexible term.
3: It's usually not that difficult. I and the other kids earned that in the '40s playing Imperialistic Gun-Toting Oppressors & Exploitive Despoilers vs. Noble Indigenous Environmentally Sensitive Spiritually Whole Lovers of World Peace
I walked in on a burglary-in-progress at my apartment once. Fortunately, one of the two guys had found an open bottle of wine in the fridge, and proceeded to drink it down. So the other guy needed to take charge of him in my presence. They'd packed everything of portable value in our suitcases, and must have been about ready to go. The lucid guy steered his companion closer to the door than I was, me backing away, and then said with what I think was fair aplomb: "We be going, now" and they did.
My brother's reaction to the story was "Man, you should have had a gun."
Me: "If I'd had a gun, I'd have left it at home, and I'd have found myself looking looking down the barrel of it in the hands of a scared, drunk guy."
6.--Hmmph. In our games, the Noble Indigenous locked the Oppressors and Despoilers in the root cellar and fed them ivy. For HOURS. We, the littler kids who ended up playing the oppressors and despoilers, learned how to pick locks.
The BBC runs a survival, escape and evasion type course of exactly that sort of type. Their overseas journalists go on it. Lots of scary SAS types kidnapping them at a country house somewhere.
A friend works for the World Service news and colleagues of his have been on it.
I, according to the police, interrupted an armed robbery in a drug store by running in to get a carton of Luckies. My jacket blew back, making the .45 visible for a second or two. They ran out and I was the one who spent some time talking to the cops when they pulled me over later. They initially thought I was the look-out.
The kiddie cop who put me in the back of his car had left the cuffs loose enough to slip without effort but I was going to tighten them if he managed to shoot his nuts off while tucking the still cocked .45 into his belt.
I'm not sure there's a moral to the story except that it pays to keep one's eyes open to what's around.
Bio -- You should submit that to the "Armed Citizen" column in Guns & Ammo.
My jacket blew back, making the .45 visible for a second or two.
Wait, what happened in this sentence?
He starred in a John Woo movie.
Had the other side of his jacket blown back instead it would have revealed a shattering window and a flock of doves in flight. I'm betting it would have had the same effect.
I have a similar, but not as dramatic, story from over here on the dirty hippie side of the culture. As an undergraduate, I was arrested protesting the first gulf war (a fact that still comes up whenever I try to cross a border). The police put those plastic riot cuffs on us and placed us in a paddy wagon. I was quickly able to slip my hands out of them, but then put them back in, so as not to made trouble.
Although now that I think about it, I bet the offices put the cuffs on loosely on purpose, because we didn't seem a threat, and they are used to protesters in Washington DC.
11: I started writing it up several times and kept bogging down in the details, like it really was a dark and stormy night. The whole story was more interesting to live through than to tell, I think.
12: What's unclear?
14: Two extra magazines. It doesn't pay to mess with someone suicidally depressed but too chicken to do it himself.
What's unclear?
What you were doing walking around with a loaded .45? By the fact that you got cuffed, I'm guessing you aren't a cop -- what was it for?
It doesn't pay to mess with someone suicidally depressed but too chicken to do it himself.
There's your opening for the story.
I thought the .45 was the robber's, so I didn't get how your jacket blowing back revealed his gun. Also whether you were interrupting the cops, since they seemed to be there, or the robbers, and risking getting shot. Or both. Either way, good story.
Bio was being euphemistic. What he meant to say is that his pants slipped down, revealing the 12-incher, and that scared the robbers away.
Think what would have happened if he'd shown any of the 29 other goddamn dirty cocks.
making the .45 visible for a second or two
You people are really literal-minded, you know?
Wait, Biohazard was fucking helpy-chalk?
23: Your version of the joke was better than mine.
17: 19: I carried something in .45 or 9mm all the time I lived in the deep South. 'Twas an easy thing to do legally, just pay a few bucks for the license and have no record. 'Twas fairly common, many of the docs & nurses at the hospital had CCW permits and guns too. Working weird hours and carrying expensive gear around a semi-bad section of town made it seem rational.
Apparently, an off-duty cop from the next town up the road had seen some other guys go into the store before me and get set to rob the place. He radioed that into the locals. Then I showed up, ran in, spooked the alleged bad guys, and then I left after buying the Luckies, totally oblivious to the whole thing. I saw lots of police cars pull in to the parking lot as I left but didn't pay any attention. They followed me out and pulled me over a mile away down the road.
The only scary part was the getting out of the car, there's a fair amount of epinephrine flowing in everyone.
Apparently, an off-duty cop from the next town up the road had seen some other guys go into the store before me and get set to rob the place. He radioed that into the locals. Then I showed up, ran in, spooked the alleged bad guys, and then I left after buying the Luckies, totally oblivious to the whole thing. I saw lots of police cars pull in to the parking lot as I left but didn't pay any attention. They followed me out and pulled me over a mile away down the road.
Is Joe Pesci your cousin?
No, but my daughter played softball with the senior detective sergeant's daughter.
OT, but Sheriff Andy Taylor hates America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CvoC551i2E
Joe, did you get my email or have you changed addresses?
did you get my email or have you changed addresses
These are not mutually exclusive [/w-lfs-n].
I don't know if that is for me but my email is below.
I didn't get the email. Could you try to resend?
"There's a good chance that anybody in the United States might find himself tied up, hands behind the back, watch his family tied up, and robbers ... will come with a handgun, a silencer, and start to shoot everybody in the head."
"good chance" of being tied up faced with a silencer? Oh lordy what scam.
I hate it when they don't use the silencer.
Besides gswift's reaction, did anyone else think that by the time they have you tied up, blindfolded, and lined up for the execution-style killings, it might be a little too late to pull the hero routine?
No way, Cala. That's exactly the right time. Don't you know anything about drama?
Also. "Armed Citizen"column is in American Rifleman, Biohazard's story rules, and rob helpy-chalk, either they knew you weren't a threat, or they were hoping you'd slip your cuffs off so they'd have a reason to knock some heads of some nonviolent hippies.
39: I suppose you can't bite your way free if you don't allow yourself to be tied up.
it might be a little too late to pull the hero routine?
Yeah. That's just plain stupid. What I've told the kids is that if one is going to get shot it's better to be shot while still in the mall parking lot than on an empty road in the boonies. In other words, escalate to whatever it takes immediately and decisively.
it's better to be shot while still in the mall parking lot
That's been my mantra to the kids as well, with Elizabeth Smart being an example of what not to do.
Jeez, all the stories my parents ever told were about my dad's Navy days and how sometimes going on a spree of light-hearted vandalism would count as a date when my parents first met. Your kids have all the fun.
44: Things *really* have changed since the Forties & Fifties. I mean, we had to make zip-guns from Fanner Fifties, and school was uphill both ways. But Halloween candy wasn't deadly, and neither was sex.
neither was sex
Clearly you have never met my grandparents.