As I pulled my car through my sister’s gated community I found myself under attack by a pair of armed assailants. They adopted a spray and pray approach to my seemingly harmless mini-van. Before I dove under the dash I noticed that my gun-toting wannabe bad guys were under 12. A closer look revealed their AK-47s as wooden stakes. I’d dodged a barrage of pretend bullets and (I might add) they’d dodged getting grounded by mommy and daddy. Driving away, I wondered: how safe do these suburban barons feel behind their high iron gates? Do they feel secure enough to forego gun ownership? Are gated communities the last redoubt for upper middle-class suburban gun control advocates, or does the fortress lifestyle make them more likely to tool-up?
I’d wager that gun-ownership rates are higher in a gated community. Protect & defend.
I agree. One nice thing about gated communities are the lack of solicitors…..notwithstanding the nazis who run the HOA.
I don’t think they encourage gun control as they might give an over-inflated estimate of security to some residents resulting in some (a few) people not believing they need a home gun. Some wealthy people, who do not like guns, may also be drawn to the gated communities. People who live there want and demand home security. Actual gun ownership rates may be very high. The residents of a gated community can also afford to buy a number of high quality guns.
The folks living in gated communities have admitted that their possessions are more important to them. They will want to protect their large collection of “stuff”. Also, they can easily afford any gun they want and a ton of ammo.
What are you talking about?
I live in a gated community. Love my gate! Love my home alarm! Love my arsenal! Love my cache of ammo!
Good eye, able to differentiate an AK from a wood stake at that range =P.
Definitely installs a false sense of security.
The gated communities where my parents live only effectively screen out solicitors, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and door-to-door Mormons. There were a string of robberies in one of them where the guys just used a utility van to get a work day pass. As long as you give a name of somebody that lived there, they let anyone in. And a fair amount of gated communities only have a gate, and no fence or wall around the rest of the community.
At least license plates are logged and video is taken at the controlled entrances. It keeps out some because much easier targets are available. There are also lots of wives who don’t have to work, so there are more eyes around during the day than normal. Where I live some stay at home moms don’t like guns, but their husbands do. They all do have dogs.
If all you have is a gate and a clicker with no monitoring, it doesn’t do much.
The only thing gated communities are good for, is pissing off family members who want to get in, but either have to wait 10 minutes to get in, and give everyone a false sense of security.
My cousin lives in a gated community, but that doesn’t stop him from carrying at home, or having a full safe.
I have seen no downside to having a gate out front of my neighborhood. I’m also not naive enough to think it’s a cure-all. A gate is just another tool in the safety belt.
Some home owners associations actually get appalled when they find out that people in their communities have guns in their homes
I live in a gated community with a 24-hour gate guard. When I come home, my pistol comes out of the safe and I home carry. I put the pistol back in the safe before I head out for work. It makes me feel a little safer. Ever check crimereports.com? There’s no crime in my neighborhood, except there’s plenty of it in the neighborhoods surrounding mine.
I would bet that one out of every three houses in our gated community have weapons. But we do live in Louisiana.
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