Pardon the change of gears from my typical detailed deconstructions of anti-gunners’ falsehoods, fallacies and folderol. This is more in the nature of a compare and contrast on two home invasions by the same man, the same night, in the same neighborhood, and how the outcomes differed and could have been much worse. The Southern Oregon Mail Tribune reports that on the evening of Saturday 6/9 . . .
Richard B. Batson, 34, of McKinleyville, Calif., first knocked on the door of Becky Goode’s home on Pine Street at about 8:30 p.m. Before Goode could even get to the door, Batson barreled his way inside her residence, locking the dead bolt behind him, she said.
“My heart was pounding,” Goode said. “What freaked me out the most was when he reached out and locked the dead bolt. He was saying somebody was trying to kill him. I kept saying, Dude, you need to get out of my house.'” [emphasis added]
We’ll pause here for a moment and see what we’ve got. An apparently deranged man is in this woman’s home and all she can do is beg him to leave. But then she gets her chance:
When Batson headed toward the kitchen, Goode, 48, went out the front door, shouting for a neighbor to help her daughter, who was in her bedroom, while she frantically called police.
“I kept thinking, are there knives out in the kitchen? Does he have a weapon?” she said.
She gets her chance to run away, leaving her sleeping daughter at the mercy of a nut-job. And we all know how well that worked for Jessica Carpenter and her siblings. Thank providence, though, nothing happened to the little girl or her mother in this case. The police eventually arrived (doesn’t say how long it took) and . . .
Rogue River police Officer Robert Buren arrived on scene and searched Goode’s house, but the intruder was gone. Witnesses told Buren that the man had jumped the backyard fence and may have entered a residence on Berglund Street, located directly behind Goode’s house, said Chief Ken Lewis.
Buren quickly responded to the second address and found Batson kneeling on the living room floor, held at gunpoint by the homeowner who was armed with a .38 Special revolver, Lewis said.
Anyone notice a difference here? Anyone? One of these things is not like the other. Now that is the way home invasion stories should end.
I like it better when they end with the perpetrator having their body temperature set to room temperature. It saves taxpayers money as well as being one of the few methods that guarantees the perpetrator will never commit any crime ever again.
I disagree.
You and I dont know if the guy in this story really was afraid for his life when he busted into those houses (probably not, but we don’t know). Maybe he was mentally ill and off his meds. Maybe he was drunk and confused. Who knows.
Bruce is right. This one ended in the best possible way. A potentially violent situation was defused by a quick thinking (and armed) homeowner and everyone went home (or to jail) safe.
Sorry but if you enter my house without being wanted you will have lead in you before you leave. Also I like to post warning signs. Such as “Trespassers will be shot & survivors will be shot again”.
Part of my opinion comes from California cops telling my uncle they would have preferred to have brought a body bag for the perpetrator the hand cuffs When he had an attempted burglary that ended in a similar way to this case.
I go back and forth on the idea of posting signs on my property stating something along the lines that an intruder will be shot. Hopefully a would be intruder will see it and choose an easier target. However, I worry that a) it could be used against me legally if I do end up shooting someone and b) it advertises to criminals “I have guns in my house, come steal them when I’m at work”. So far, the cons have always outweighed the pros so I just carry concealed and try and remain a low profile with the neighbors (never telling them that I shoot or own any firearms).
Although, that being said my wife had an incident in front of our house with a group of youths that tried to attack her. She drew on them and they backed off. We called the police and it was a big attention grabbing incident right in front of our house. So that definitely brought some unwanted attention.
“Trespassers will be shot & survivors will be shot again”.
Any decent prosecutor will pull premeditation from a DGU with a sign like this. STFU happens before and after imho.
Someone who walks across your lawn without your permission may be a trespasser. If you shoot him, you will be in jail for 20 years, he or his relatives will be soon be living in your house, and I’ll bring the beer and a nice housewarming gift.
A home invader is someone who breaks into your home when people are there, creating a potential danger of death, rape or serious bodily injury for you or those under your roof. Home invaders deserve whatever they get.
“Maybe he was mentally ill and off his meds. Maybe he was drunk and confused.”
In either event, he’s a defective, and needs to be returned to the factory on a warranty claim.
Enough coddling. Mentally ill and can’t maintain without the use of medication? Take the damn medication. Otherwise, you might end up dead. Get easily confused when drinking and think that people are trying to kill you and that the only way to save yourself is barging uninvited into homes that are not your own? Stop drinking. Otherwise, you might end up dead.
There’s too many defectives out there these days. Thinning the herd is an absolute necessity. Not only does it reduce current incidences of wayward behavior, but future incidences as well, by not giving the defectives time to pass their genes and their behaviors on to the next generation.
FWIW, when diabetics blood sugar gets out of control, they act just like a drunk. I, personally, would feel pretty bad if the ‘drunk’ I shot was a diabetic. YMMV, I guess.
The diabetics I know are real nice people. Their problem isn’t of their own making, it could just as well be you or me. Not people I want to thin from the herd at all.
It’s about doing what you have to do to protect your family, not implementing a personal eugenics campaign. If I find someone sitting on my couch acting confused, I’m going to watch them while the better half calls the police. If they charge me with a knife, that’s one thing. Just being non compos mentis is another.
“There’s too many defectives out there these days.”
It should read “there are too many”, now will someone please thin James from the herd? He’s really annoying and obviously defective. An adult that can’t use grammar? What else can’t he do properly. Illiterates drive me crazy. Thin him on out.
“Maybe he was mentally ill and off his meds. Maybe he was drunk and confused. Who knows.” And maybe he was a psychopathic homicidal serial killer – who knows?
And that’s the real problem with a home invasion, Steve – you don’t have the time, or the in-house psychotherapist, to be able to determine which one you are dealing with. Harmless drunk/mentally ill person, or crazed killer? Please provide me with your answer and your decision to shoot/not shoot in the next tenth of a second. An incorrect answer may result in the death of you and your loved ones, but please do not allow that risk to interfere with your sense of compassion towards strangers who burst into your home and lock the dead bolt behind them.
I’m glad that no one was killed or injured. Hopefully that first woman will think a little harder about her home defense decisions.
… and at least lock the door at night…
—
matt_
Um, yeah. I’ll second that
“She gets her chance to run away, leaving her sleeping daughter at the mercy of a nut-job.”
The girl was lucky that time. It could have quickly turned out totally different for the teen girl. The mother ran away seeking help and perhaps because she was more scared for herself than to stay and protect her daughter to the best of her ability which is her first moral responsibility.
+1
Thank you. Now consider what the media and social response would be if the parent was instead the father who ran away to safety at the neighbor’s home.
Un.Fcking.Believable. Parent of the Year you are not.
How little Motherly instinct must one have before one is able to simply abandon their daughter to a potential threat? Honestly, if she had any shame at all she would’ve lied and said the burglar chase her outside then ran back in.
I’m kinda curious what Mikey will have to say about this one. If he has anything to say at all.
He’d say, “See?, She did the right thing, de-escalated the situation, called the police, everything turned out fine & no one got hurt.”
Nevermind that she’d roled the dice with her daughter’s life and that Richard Batson, now intimately familiar with the interior of Goode’s house, will soon to be released on bail.
Time for Ms. Goode to buy a firearm.
And nevermind the fact that the whole situation was ended by a person with a gun. A person that wasn’t a cop.
The 5-0 did pretty well by arresting the bad guy, and didn’t shoot any puppies in the process.
@Accur81 – believe me, if there was a puppy anywhere near there the LEOs would have shot it.
The goal is to make any intruder more afraid of what is inside of your home than whatever may be chasing him outside.
The mother escaping was the best decision she could make. She was able to summon help and the intruder now realized that police would be coming, eventually. Better than 2 women found dead…. What do you think the chances of her overpowering the intruder actually were?
A lot better if she had a firearm ON HER PERSON in the house-as in ,not locked in a safe or hidden behind a cabinet. Just like you wouldn’t lock your gun up in a case on the street( barring legal issues) , don’t do it at home if you can help it. In both places things can go to pot in a hurry.
Honest question – how do you square that with having small children in the house? Biometric safe?
Biometric safes are awful.
Get something with a simplex lock.
I am actually looking at a gun vault. while they have models with biometric, they also have key codes with a a palm print, i.e. you put your fingers on it even in the dark and hit the key “finger” sequence. It also has a key too..
That I think is the best of both worlds, just in case.
I have small children. My handgun is in a holster on my hip at all times. When I sleep, I store my handgun over 6 feet up in the air in a location that my children cannot see and cannot access without waking me up. They are in no danger whatsoever.
Ironically, before I could click on the “Post Comment” button, my daughter just called me outside to deal with an 80 pound dog that was loose. I was able to run straight outside already armed. Had the dog attacked, it would have really sucked if I had to waste another 10 seconds running to where I would presumably keep a biometric safe, open it, retrieve a handgun, and then run back to the door.
You TEACH your children. I became a cop in 1975 and my children were 3 & 5 years of age. I promptly took them to the range and taught both the basic rules of firearm safety and how to aim and shoot the firearm I carried on duty. Took the mystery out of guns and they never, ever touched a firearm without adult supervision and on an approved range. A co-worker simply told his kids, “Don’t Touch” and lost one child to a tragic accident that would not have happened if his children were taught to handle firearms safely. If they can walk and talk they are NOT too young to learn.
By wearing it in good leather UPON YOUR PERSON AT ALL TIMES. Thus, safely secured from curious little hands, but immediately available should the need arise. That’s how.
I’m deeply disturbed that the mother ran out and left her kid. I’m a parent and I’d never run out of my house and leave anyone. I’d die with them if I had to. This sounds like one of those people on “bath salts” or K2. I’m glad it didn’t end with someone dying though. Glad the second homeowner was prepared.
If my time in Iraq taught me anything, it’s this: Not everyone’s flight or fight mechanisms function equally. Mine, for instance, is set to fight 100%. Many of the men I stood with were set to flight 100%. The rest were in between. Don’t blame the woman for her genetic code and predisposition.
From an evolutionary perspective, it was a good choice since she could then survive and have another child. On the same token, if she fought and killed the invader, that’s also good for evolution since it removes the invader from the gene pool.
He might have been drunk, on drugs, or mentally unstable. At my house, he will be a dead guy who was drunk, on drugs, or mentally unstable.
In Bruce’s last deconstruction of anti-gun propaganda I ended my post with the statement that they are not anti-gun, they are anti-self defense. This particular incident demonstrates the truth of the proposition.
Gun grabbers believe your chances of a bad outcome with a criminal are so small they should be discounted. How many times has Mr. Bonomo (where is he by the way) said that? And if you happen to be victim then that is akin to being in traffic accident, i.e., just part of life. But they go further than that in their thinking. Allowing people to acquire the means of self defense results in an unequal risk of victimhood since buying the means of self defense is optional. To the gun control advocate it is unfair that this woman should have to run for her life or be a victim while another person has the means to protect himself. Their warped view of equality requires that all [except them] face equal risk.
Traffic accidents, industrial accidents, home accidents, recreational accidents, fires, are facts of life- everything has risks. However, in all those venues, no matter how unlikely, we do take precautions like safety equipment (seat belts/fire extinguishers/helmets/safety lines etc. etc.) and insurance. Firearms are safety equipment and insurance for just one more low odds fact of life. I don’t advocating forcing others to take the steps I do to deal with life’s risk (diet and exercise etc) so I don’t take kindly to those trying to force me to accept their choices for dealing with life’s risks.
MikeB’s notion of an ideal world is beyond idealistic, it’s unrealistic. The knuckleheads of the world only learn respect by encountering more of the second, rather than the first scenario.
Here’s why I have both firearms and a suspicious dog. My snarling canine will hold the attention of any home invader long enough for me to bring guns to bear. From the standpoint of paperwork, the second homeowner did the optimal thing: capture and (sadly) release.
We’ve got guns, dogs, OC, handcuffs, and Tasers!
+1 on the dog. Best and cheapest forward warning system you can get. My house isn’t an impregnable fortress but motion lights + a dog with a mean ass bark, that lets everything that moves know that he doesn’t appreciate them being alive, means that it’s very unlikely that someone’s going to force their way into my house quickly or quietly.
I have a little dog outside to wake up the big dog inside who then wakes me up and I have Remington 870 12 ga with 5 loads of double o buck under the bed !!!
Then the show starts !!!
“Before Goode could even get to the door, Batson barreled his way inside her residence, locking the dead bolt behind him, she said.”
So did he break one lock, but not the dead-bolt? Or was her door unlocked?
Self defense tip: use all of your ^%#&*@$ locks!
Good tip, but to be honest most home door locks-including my own-are engaged by door frames so flimsy a good kick would suffice for entry. I live in an apartment, so modifying the door frame for more security=violation of lease.
ST: re: apartment deadbolt security
One thing you could probably get away with is to simply reinforce the pocket the deadbolt goes into. Typically in cheap apartment installations, the deadbolt fires into a bare hole in the wood frame, covered by a cosmetic strike plate held in by a couple of screws, maybe 3/4″ long. When I replaced my deadbolt, it came with a new “pocket liner” similar to the middle one in this photo. I’m sure you could find one by itself, without buying a new deadbolt, if you looked around a bit. Installing it required enlarging/deepening the existing hole a little bit, and chiseling out the rectangle where the old cosmetic plate was a little deeper to accommodate the additional thickness of the new pocket. It took me about half hour, all told.
The pocket itself has three holes: one in the bottom of the pocket, and two on the ears, offset from the holes centered at the end of the cosmetic plate. The three “pocket holes” each got a 3-1/2″ wood screw, then the cosmetic cover plate goes on top with two additional conventionally sized 5/8″ screws. Thus, instead of my deadbolt being secured by nothing more than 3/4″ of pine door frame, it’s secured all the way into the framing around the door opening. Still not going to stop a determined entry, but I’m pretty certain it would stand up to a couple-three hard kicks.
I don’t blame her for running. I am sure she is now second guessing herself for doing so, but she will live with the decision.
I am really happy in this case no one was shot or died or hurt. No shots fired and the guy arrested. Even if it was the second case where he meets an armed home owner that person did all the right things. It is a perfect DGU example! We all look at numbers from people who died, but like we continually point out how many times did or does a gun stop a situation in it’s tracks. No one hurt, no one dies, not even a discharge of a firearm.
How much you want to bet she is now on a 10 day wait for a gun?
I know a lot of you are blaming the mother. I can relate and would say I would have acted differently. I am, however, reminded by a sober note.
A good friend who now lives here, lost her mother and 16 month old daughter in a terrorist act in Israel. A bomb went off and she fell to the floor. Her mother threw her self over the baby, and both died from the wounds. She has lived that day over and over and wonders why she didn’t cover her baby. She has been forever scared and carries the guilt from that day.
It is an example, that her body acted for self preservation and yes she is now living with that situation. Until you have faced it you don’t know what your reaction will be. Since I haven’t faced this I can not even say what my bodies urge would be or what I will do. I can train my mind for the situation and have a plan.
I have faced other situations, and when you train and plan situations and stop thinking about it you react according to your training. It sounds weird and probably not worded in the best light.
I have been shot at. And our platoon acted on training and instinct. We ran for appropriate cover as a team, and I helped a friend to cover who stumbled along with my commander. We didn’t think forget him we are going to die, we didn’t even think. We just got him between us and ran. Afterwards I felt like I wanted to puke, and well did. Sure we were told we were heroes, or bold, and fearless, BS! We were doing what we were trained to do and we were scared to death, but the realization of that fear didn’t happen until we had secured the situation.
An example: I have thought about clearing my house, where are the choke points. What entrances would an intruder take. How can I best secure my family quickly. Use pie to clear door ways, and where do my kids sleep, and how would I react. You can plan and hopefully god forbid something happens you can execute the plan.
The dangerous thing about the anti gun philosophy is that it creates the tragedies its supposed to ‘prevent’ by criminalizing the MINDSET of self defense. If one never thinks crime can happen to them they’ll be that much worse should the balloon go up. I remember my first rifle drill in BMT where I straight locked up:the thought of me having to kill someone literally *never occured to me before* .Having grown up in Chicago its no mystery why, but 2 years and a substantial education in personal defense later the balloon did go up and when I reached for my piece, there was no freeze, pause, or even time to contemplate. I simply acted, and fortunately no shots needed to be fired then too. It was only afterwards that the full cognitive realizations of what could have happened took place, followed by a very errie shaking episode. Fighting for your life isn’t fun for the people who HAVE the training and awareness, and being put in that position as an unprepared citizen is nothing less than terrifying. That reason alone is enough to oppose any form of gun control, to say nothing of the legal and national implications.
Those ladies could all be dead had the right type been in the break in :you only have seconds to shoot or run, most break ins end sadly in death or lots of hurt …never open your door to anyone you do not know… you life counts on it…
“I go back and forth on the idea of posting signs on my property”
We have a NRA sticker in the window next to the door; subtle, but effective
i have never used one of those biometric safes. all of my guns except one, are locked in a safe. the problem with a sudden home intrusion is will you have tme to get to your safe and open it. i have my granddaughters, aged 4 and 6, at home with me. i have to be able to respond to a threat immediately and my less than ideal solution is to pocket carry a s&W 442 in a pocket holster. better than nothing and it stays with me.
Florida has its “Stand Your Ground” law which is now under review, thanks to Mr. Zimmerman. Taken under its original context, the law is solid and viable. When some one enters your home, and you fear for your life, deadly force, aka bullet, can be and should be used to protect human life. The problem comes down to when or how the individual feels threatened. If they come in my home, lock the deadbolt, and make any movement period, as soon as I or my girlfriend get our hands on a firearm, sorry, wrong house.
Until a rash of home invasions, I didn’t have weapons in the house; but now I do. I can’t think of a rational reason not to light somebody(ies) up if they break into my home KNOWING I’M THERE. I can’t believe that any DA with the sense God gave an anelid would bring a case against a homeowner defending themselves against an intruder(s).
According to press reports, even cops that have “good shoots” have bad reactions to killing even a Grade A+ Bad Guy that 150% deserves killing. If, after you shoot someone invading your home you are troubled; I believe this means your concience and your moral compass are fully functional.
We all know what the results would have been with a CA approved Gun Safe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWucDHAphQ8
Well personally I carAthelstan the time in my home!!! Our 10 yr old daughter has her own youth model .22lr in the corner of her room!!! Empty by her choice because as she says” it is safe that way”!!! Smart girl!!! We all go Shoot as often as possible and other than her .22 every gun in our house stays loaded!!! An empty firearm is only a short club!!!! No much good for anything else!!!!
I keep my compact 1911 loaded and either in my IWB holster on me or on the end table and do not have to worry about the little one bothering it at all!!!!
BTW: yes she can and does shoot as much as we do. She has so far shot and shot well her Rossi single shot .22lr youth Model, her moms Glenfield model 60 .22lr and my Heritage Rough Rider 6.5″ SA revolver in both .22lr and .22 WMR!!! Friday she got to shoot(and did pretty good for her first time) my newly purchased 1910/14 Mauser Pocket Pistol in 6.35mm (.25auto) and was giggling her butt off after she realized that it didn’t recoil very much!!!’
I know …… Yak yak yak!!!!Lol!!! Point is teach your children every aspect of gun safety, take them shooting as often as possible and explain every time what the firearm in their hands and in their homes can do if misused or played with!!!!
If it’s dark and someone who doesn’t belong in my home is in my home… the last thing I’m going to assume is that they came over for a friendly chat.
As bad as it might sound… the rule of ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ does have it’s place at times. Granted… if that rule is in effect then you’re already in a world of hurt but at some times… you have no time for thinking.
Comments are closed.