Sipsey Street Irregulars: I have a question. "There's always some dumb sonofabitch that don't know me and ain't smart enough to take the time to ask around."

Monday, August 15, 2011

I have a question. "There's always some dumb sonofabitch that don't know me and ain't smart enough to take the time to ask around."

CNN caption: "Brown Safe created this $6,500 custom-designed safe for a customer who needed to protect piles of gold bars, jewelry and cash."

Booming business of fear: Sales of safes soar.

I have a question: How long will your safe protect valuables when a home-invasion gang is holding a pistol to your two-year-old daughter's head? There's a lot of guys who have some gold or silver tucked away on the top shelf of their gun safes. That's fine. But what I am questioning here is the belief that a safe -- and a safe alone, absent firearms and the will to use them -- can protect your valuables from predators. Even if it is a break-in while you are not there, they will discover the safe, conclude it has valuables, and come back later with a better plan and a bigger crew when you are home to open it for them and available for a little friendly persuasion.

There is a man up in Winston County I know who once had a meth addict try to rob his house about ten years ago. The meth addict did not survive the experience. He regretted having to kill the man, but observed that the predator's death had netted some benefits. "Bought me a heap of peace and quiet," he told me. I pointed out that he still carried, even when he was on his own property. "Well," he explained, "there's always some dumb sonofabitch that don't know me and ain't smart enough to take the time to ask around."

Safes are fine, I suppose. Vigilance, ability and a neighborhood defense plan are better. Building a reputation for those things doesn't hurt either.

2 comments:

Ashrak said...: "Safes are fine, I suppose. Vigilance, ability and a neighborhood defense plan are better. Building a reputation for those things doesn't hurt either."

While I am technically disarmed here in the police state that is Illinois, my sidearm is always as nearby as possible, especially at home, and everyone who knows me and my family knows full well that is the "case". One might say some of us are "Diggins" in. ;)

I may not yet be able to wear that sidearm regularly, but I, along with my vehicle, can and do wear firearm related attire daily. Hopefully, the SAF will facilitate something of a switch in wardrobe shortly. (Fingers crossed)

I really liked this piece, Mike. Thanks for the pick me up read first thing this Monday morning.

Reputation does indeed go a long way.; August 15, 2011 at 5:57 AM
Trey said...: Fernando (FerFal) had some very good advice in this regard - have more than one safe. One to give away if needed, and a better hidden (and better stocked) one to keep.

Of course, the best outcome is nothing happens, 'cause no one knows you have a safe.; August 15, 2011 at 10:37 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, August 15, 2011

I have a question. "There's always some dumb sonofabitch that don't know me and ain't smart enough to take the time to ask around."

2 comments:

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