Bad Advice in Story on Avoiding Robberies

Your April 23 editorial on how to protect one’s self from a follow-home robbery missed the mark.

It is not necessary to start watching for a follower when you first leave a parking lot. All that is necessary is what my sister does habitually in Houston. Her house is on a north-south street. She approaches it on one of the east-west streets on either side, going one block past her street, then making three 90-degree turns before approaching her house. If a car makes the same three turns, she drives straight to a police station. It is simple, effective, requires only about 30 seconds and is an easy habit to cultivate.

The advice about how to react if you are in your home and someone starts to break down the door is simply bad advice, caused by The Times’ aversion to guns.

It says to harden the target with solid-core doors and strong locks. That is good but insufficient.

The advice “get out” is useless. You discuss escape routes like those for a fire or an earthquake. In a fire or an earthquake, however, you would not expect to meet people with guns as you left.

In my neighborhood, almost every house has a high wall around the back yard. If you were able to climb that wall, you would be in the back yard of a neighbor who would be unlikely to recognize you in the dark and who might think you were the burglar.

Even if that didn’t happen and you got to the street, what would you do next? Call the police? How? Did you stop to pick up your flip-phone? I don’t think so. In the same editorial, The Times advises your neighbors not to let you into their houses.

If you have time to use an escape route, you have time to run to your bedroom and pick up a shotgun. When you hear the door crash open, shout down the hall that you have a shotgun and work the slide then , not before, so the intruders will hear it. If they are at all rational, the next sound you hear will be the intruders in full retreat. If they start down the hall toward you, stick the shotgun in the hall and fire it once.

Home safety is each person’s own responsibility. To assume that the reader is an idiot who is incapable of learning how to use and store a firearm safely is giving advice that is worse than useless.

SINCLAIR BUCKSTAFF

Northridge