My Secret is Out

Yesterday, the first morning after the storm, I went outside and saw my neighbor sitting on a diesel wheel loader with a forestry grapple. He clears land for a living, and he was in my gate getting ready to cut and move a big tree that landed in my driveway.

We talked for a few minutes after he moved the tree, and he told me he had seen the police at my house.

I thought I knew what it was about. We have had problems with bugs setting off our motion detectors. It happened twice while we were out of town, and we had to have the cops come out and see whether we were being burglarized.

He said that wasn’t why the police were there when he had his encounter. He said it was one policeman who was asking questions about fentanyl.

Apparently, the policeman told him a tipster had called in, saying a black man had been going in and out, and he was selling fentanyl.

Again, I thought I knew what he was talking about, and I explained.

One of my best friends is black. He’s getting a divorce. His wife is a pretty interesting lady.

He has shown me a handwritten list of poisons he found. He said his wife made it. It listed the names of various poisons, along with descriptions of what a person who ingested them would go through.

He says she is the subject of a protective order. He says she beat herself up one day in front of their children, called the police, and told them he had done it. He says the police questioned the kids, and they told a different story. He says she is not supposed to go near the family or the house.

He tells me she found herself a new man, and the two of them broke into his house, where they stole his grandmother’s cremated remains along with the children’s identification.

He also says he found a container of fentanyl in his closet, and he says she has tried to convince the police he sells it.

This is all alleged, alleged, alleged. It’s what he tells me.

Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe there is another coward out there who has decided to make the police think my friend and I sell drugs. That must be it.

I called the police when I found out, and they had a deputy contact me. Pretty funny. They assured me they are not staking out my house. Glad to hear it, because while the power was out, I had occasion to relieve myself in the yard.

My friend lives in Georgia. He has a house there. There has been a lot of confusion as to just where the wife lives. She claims she lives in Georgia, too. She has family here, though, and it may be that she lives here and pretends to live in Georgia. A suspicious person might think she’s the person who sent the police here.

It’s not clear what the purpose was. My friend is rarely here, so the cops are not likely to see him here, and if they did, what would they be expected to do? “You’re under arrest because your wife says you sell fentanyl, and that’s good enough for us.”

Is the purpose to get them to arrest me? What for? Knowing a guy whose estranged wife claims he sells fentanyl? How is that supposed to help her in the divorce?

None of it makes any sense.

I hope this is the end of it. I am the wrong person to do things like this to. I may be a fat old guy who kisses parrots and rarely exercises, but I am very, very dangerous compared to the average person on the street. It could be very bad if some imbecile showed up here, where I live with my family, with hostile intentions.

It’s rough for a criminal to encounter a homeowner who has a cheap, low-capacity 9mm he doesn’t shoot well. Encountering me and my always-handy rifles is another level entirely. I am ready for multiple visitors. When a home invader is done spraying his 15-round magazine full of cheap FMJ at the sky and the grass, I’ll just be getting started. I’ll call the cops instead if I can, but I may not be able to.

Becoming a husband and father makes you a lot more dangerous. I am starting to understand that.

My dad wasn’t the bravest guy on Earth, but when someone falsely claimed a local mafioso’s kid had raped my sister, my dad went to their house with the intention of beating him senseless. Fortunately, they were on vacation. A crew of armed thugs, including a guy who later escaped Alcatraz, went to my grandfather’s little town in Kentucky, hoping to rob his house, and he grabbed a rifle, went outside in his boxers and started blasting. I can guarantee you, he shot to kill without any reluctance at all. I knew him.

The criminals ended up in custody.

When your family is in danger, you will be carried beyond yourself, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery said of his drawing of the baobab trees.

Sometimes I think I should get better optics for protecting the house at night. I already have stuff to help me shoot assailants in the dark, but products keep getting better and cheaper.

It’s hard to sift through the nonsense when checking reviews and articles. I have come to understand that a lot of guys who are doing product reviews for “self-defense” are really thinking about shooting effeminate, 60-pound-bench-press Antifers from a quarter of a mile away. They are thinking about civil war or plain old terrorism. When they say an optic is no good for hitting someone 200 yards away on a dark night, and they dismiss it, does that dismissal really make sense to someone who wants to shoot attackers in his yard or inside his house?

Tonight I saw someone criticizing thermal sights because a thermal sight wouldn’t let him distinguish between a burglar and a child. Maybe that’s true if the burglar is a block and a half away, but I’ll go out on a limb and say I can tell the difference at a hundred feet. If you look at videos of actual thermal sights, you will see that a Youtuber in a military uniform looks like a Youtuber in a military uniform, not a 6-year-old walking to your bedroom to ask for a glass of water.

I have a thermal optic. I got it for hunting squirrels and such, which I quit doing when covid ruined everything. When you look at a warm-blooded critter through it, it’s pretty obvious what it is.

I do not want to shoot people 200 yards away. I do not want to join a militia or defend America from the Illuminati or BLM or the Trilateral Commission or MSNBC. I just want to be good at incapacitating random idiots, perhaps up to 50 yards away, mostly within 50 feet.

I asked my wife if I should upgrade our defensive capabilities because of the false police report, and she said, “Please do.” Not, “Oh, honey. Stop with the toxic masculinity.”

Let’s see. If you have armed people approaching from your dark rural yard at night, some kind of night optic is good. It will help you identify and shoot them without doing much to light you up so they can shoot back. There is no legal issue with killing a trespasser 50 or 75 yards away on your property if you can tell he is armed and have reason to think he’s hostile. This is doubly true in my county. You don’t have to wait until he comes through the door.

Even if there were a legitimate legal issue, I would not care about it if my family were in danger. The threat of prison means nothing at all compared to the threat of losing your family. Prison is bearable.

Will an optic help you distinguish outdoor assailants from friendlies? I think that’s a stupid question. Why would friendlies be in your yard in the middle of the night with guns?

Your shots will produce muzzle flash, so once you start shooting, they will figure out where you are unless they’re deceased, messed up, or running away while hypocritically and ineffectively calling on Jesus. But they should be extremely demoralized or dead by then, unless you’re dealing with professionals, which isn’t going to happen. You would be dealing with morons.

There aren’t many “professionals,” except in movies and the Mossad. I don’t think someone with real skill would do a home invasion. He’d do something sneaky that would be safe for him and very hard for you to survive.

Even if your hypothetical yard thugs locate you, the optic is still helpful, because without it, you would just see a dark yard. You wouldn’t know where they were. Your assailants, on the other hand, would know you were confined in the house, so your location would be narrowed down.

A night vision scope would have an advantage over a thermal, because thermals don’t work through glass. With a thermal, you would have to open a door or window.

What if you’re indoors, and they come in?

I still like it. You would be able to spot and shoot them in the dark. They would probably try to creep up in the darkness instead of using lights. They would hope to surprise you. With a night optic, you could do the surprising.

I just saw a forum post where good old Massad Ayoob approved of the idea of yelling to ask if intruders were friends or foes. I can’t believe that guy. How often do you show up in your friends’ houses at three a.m.? He was talking about situations where you have the advantage, which makes some sense, but it still sounds weird.

Friends call before showing up. They come when it’s convenient for you. They come to the front door. When the lights are on. Am I wrong?

Now I’m picturing a nervous guy opening up on his friends and family at a surprise birthday party.

I think night vision makes some sense for dealing with outdoor undocumented guests. You can’t run around opening windows and removing screens in a crisis.

I hate to say this, but a lot of the people who claim to be self-defense gurus are not smart. They say things that aren’t smart. You have to have the humility to listen to good advice, coupled with reasonable respect for your own intellect.

I think maybe I should upgrade my night vision capabilities. I may also upgrade my new surveillance system so it wakes me up when people are in the yard.