Why does it seem like Americans are obsessed over home invasions? Do you have a lot of them?
Constantly see people online talk about "when the robber comes thru my door" or whatever, and some of it is memes, but a lot of it is just people legit discussing what the "best weapon" to fight robbers breaking into your house at night would be - Giving it so much thought as if it is a legitimate concern. So is it? Does it happen a lot?
I've lived in cities in the US most of my life and I routinely forget to lock my door, I've never had anything happen. Nobody is desperate enough to go rooting through my dirty laundry, shoes, and old electronics for something of value.
Full disclosure I personally support an an armed proletariat. That said my favorite thing to ask home protection people is, "when is the last time you had your fire extinguisher tested?"
Its a free service offered by most fire departments. Far, far more children are killed by fires than roving packs of murderers. Guns are much more likely to be used for suicide or domestic violence. If you own a gun but not a fire extinguisher you don't really care about protecting your family, you just want to kill someone
Sorta tangentially, many American suburban developments are arranged primarily to be as defensible as possible in a way that makes the people living there extremely paranoid. Suburbs often have one or two entrances / exits branching into one looping and some number of non-looping paths. As a result, there will almost never be anyone driving through the suburb without a deliberate reason to be there. Most often, it's because they live there. Neighbors will quickly recognize each other's cars and be able to identify each other's comings and goings. Seeing an unexpected car (or any person of color as many of these spaces are entirely white) will immediately raise questions on the neighborhood snitch app or text group. Also, neighbors are constantly spying on each other because the structure of suburbia highly encourages it. This type of suburban design was created explicitly because of and for the purpose of racist paranoia.
I saw a documentary once about Americans who have a lot of guns, and there was one guy in it who kept loaded guns stashed all over his house so he'd "always be ready" if someone broke in. The interviewer didn't bring up that he was probably also leaving weapons everywhere for the burglar to use against him, and I wonder if he'd ever even considered why that might be a bad idea.
If you report a home burglary to the police they immediately assume that you're a drug dealer as they're not generally worth the risk except for the kind of target who tends to have cash and guns and drugs around
No, it’s the paranoid delusions of lead poisoned white Christians who’ve been told their entire lives that they’re persecuted and need to be vigilant against the masses that want to harm them
Closest thing to a home invasion I've ever experienced was an elderly couple that walked in on me taking a massive bong rip and asking if some guy named Jake or John or something lived here, turned out they were in the right place but the wrong floor.
Upper middle class white devils living in suburbs have a dim awareness of how their lives are situated on a mountain of corpses. Their imagination thus conjures for them an image of lower class rebellion against them. These suburban whites are already paranoid, since they're caught between two poles. They're not rich enough to be ghoulish, grinning bourgeoisie, and they're not desperate enough to identify with the working class. And these are the people who collect the most guns and obsess over home invasion. Not poorer people living in high crime neighborhoods, but sheltered whities in gated communities
So they're paranoid from two angles. With the capitalist class they'll concoct wild conspiracy theories about mind control or vaccines or whatever. With lower class people, it's just racist panic over black or Latino people existing.
A lot of the home invasion prepper types also claim they'll be prepared in the case of a tyrannical government takeover, but I seriously do not believe them. None of them are going to shoot a cop or national guard solider. I don't remember a single instance of that happening in the midst of covid curfews. Their criteria for when tyranny starts is ridiculous too. Tyranny is just gun control, and that's it. So long as suburban whitey still has small arms to play with, America is still apparently trucking along just fine.
Depending on the community it's being discussed in, "robber" might be short hand for "cop" since they do really like to do no-knock raids for the dumbest shit in America
I know a guy who constantly talks about the guns he owns and the ammo he uses and and how he'd kill anyone who tries to hurt his horses. He lives in bumfuck nowhere and, as far as he's told me, has never had any issues with his tiny handful of neighbors. It's like someone who lives in Colorado obsessively preparing for hurricanes.
We did a genocide founded on "I live here now if you invade my home I'll kill you" and then followed those people to do it again, playing the victim the whole time
The crimes of this guilty land will not be purged away, but with blood.
It's really weird because home invasions are much more common in South Africa than the US, yet we don't obsess about it but nearly as much, even if most doors have security gates and windows are barred over here. Mainly some deranged chuds obsess about it, but not your average person, even those that have unfortunately experienced it. Here it's more a vigilance thing, lock the doors and gates, make sure your car is locked, make sure no one is following you home, etc.
no. Closest thing is one time i had a black guy accidentally walk into our apartment while my tits were out and he just said,with his eyes wide as fuck "oh fuck, wrong place" and left. Bf forgot to lock the door, pretty much the only reason we do it ☠️ bf thought it was hilarious, but I bet that guy was fuckin terrified he basically ran
One answer that doesn't seem to be around is that it is/was literally in tv advertisements. Security systems and insurance companies love to run ads showing scary people dressed in black forcing windows open and shit, and chuds probably see a lot of ads.
people watch a lot of "true crime" shit. violent home invasion is also the major conflict in a lot of movies. honestly, if there was a list of widely-seen american movies where a violent home invasion happened and taken as a percentage of all widely-seen american movies, i bet that percentage would be considerably higher than the precentage of households that are ever violently invaded.
the only criminals i'm worried about coming through my door are cops. when they do, that's when the second, hidden steel door slams shut behind them and their problems begin.
In America it's easier and less like to be a legal hassle if you kill your working class neighbor instead of organizing a union and getting in a fight with your boss. We just want something to do.
Given how much American media amplifies the ones that do happen, I'm guessing it's pretty uncommon. Most people I've heard bring it up to fantasize about it are just hoping they get a legal excuse to shoot someone. Idk why they don't just apply to become a pig
I've heard fuckers talk about how they don't care if it's just a burglar trying to flee, they "should have thought about that before they broke in"
Every damn day! When I was growing up my dad told me the communists were coming, and they would knock on my door and say I have to share my home with this group of homeless people, and if I said no then they'd shoot me (true story). Sure enough, soon as I bought a home, they showed up! Now some scraggly homeless dudes who talk a lot about taxes keep walking in like they own the place, drink my milk from the carton and leave it out, leave porn up (and even upload their own home made porn) on my computer, "borrow" my tools and they never bring them back, ordered cable and I got the bill... I could go on, but I'm going to Walmart to get a gun and put an end to this nonsense. Bastards don't even take out the trash or mow the lawn!!
On a serious note, a couple years ago we had some people that would go around looking for unlocked side garage doors and stealing tools. I've got some things of value. But I'd rather them take that shit and file an insurance claim than kill someone, fuck that noise. Take all our shit, I've got my digital stuff locked down and it can all be replaced. If someone is breaking in to hurt us it's another story. I'm visibly queer and there's some seriously scary people in the suburbs, I keep a gun handy for those scenarios. However, psychotic right wingers in the suburbs seem to have this reverence for private property, so I'm honestly not too concerned.
other places where you see this specific breed of paranoia is among white south africans.
the active ingredients in this fantasy are a middle class of temporarily embarrassed millionaires and a racialized underclass lurking in the shadows of their minds.
Castle Doctrine is a legal framework for justifiying the protecting of your home with violence. I think boomers watched too many cowboy media when they were young. It basically informs their whole worldview at this point.
Most of them are goofy because they live in safe areas.
Some people need guns because they really are in unsafe areas.
I think the most likely home invasion threat is a cop and unfortunately you probably shouldn't shoot them in that situation. They also do no-knock break-ins so you won't even know if they're cops at first.
A lot of people here have the mindset “it’s never happened to me so therefore everyone is being dramatic.” While I’m not too paranoid about people
Breaking into my home in this neighborhood, I always hear gunshots and police sirens every few months. And I certainly would not leave anything unlocked a few blocks down from my street. I tend to be vigilant either way. I don’t have the luxury of being white or loving of America, so there are real threats out there, but I usually don’t expose my beliefs enough for it to be detrimental to my life.
It's like a more personalized preoccupation with DAE le post apocalypse and DAE le zombies. Burgerlanders really, really want a justification to kill someone and await that scenario the way a small child might await Santa Claus.
Not really, never happened to me and never happened to anyone in my social circle. It does happen but the people who worry about it (middle class and above white folks) are virtually never the victims of it. When it does occur, it’s usually done by poor people in poor neighborhoods, but even that’s not something that all that common.
As others have said, it’s just 100% racism. Went into a little more detail in this comment yesterday.
All the Asian families in my grandma's neighborhood had glue poured in their locks during covid. There was also that one rapper who bragged about "only robbing chinese". Even if these people get caught they just get a slap on the wrist.
Look at what happened to that 7yo Palestinian boy. If you have a family and you're a minority in America it would be negligent not to have a gun.
a lot of states have laws where you can legally kill someone on your property in "self defense" or whatever, so the fantasy is that you get to slaughter people on your property with no repercussions because "self defense". its basically like a testing ground for whatever cool new gun toy you got, rich white americans fantasize about testing their new insane weapons on "home invaders" (usually just any minority stepping on their property) because its legal.
I was home invaded. Shit happens so fast that if you left the moment to go get a gun then you're fucked. That fantasy only applied to people with big houses and boring lives.
I don’t know why but home invasion is my biggest fear. I had nightmares for weeks after watching Gerald’s Game. For what it’s worth, in my nightmares, the perpetrator is always white, so I don’t think it’s strictly a racism thing.
I think part of it is we own so little in a capitalist society and it’s such a violent society, so your home can feel like your only safe space. Having that safety shattered would feel like the ultimate violation to me. And then as a woman, you add in the probability of sexual violence and it gets scarier. Also very afraid that people would kill my dogs, but cops would do that too.
I have moderate to severe anxiety and am pretty agoraphobic, so this might not be how normal people think.
Like a lot of US crime, not the worst in the world, but not great, and way lower than it was in the crime peak of the 80’s and early 90’s. Also worth noting that most home invasions occur during mid day hours when people are less likely to be home because burglars aren’t morons.
I have like three people break into my house in the middle of the night, and in each case it turned out they were extremely drunk frat bros who were convinced that it was their friends house that they were trying to get to to crash at (I live near a university). I just tried to make sure they were alright and help them get to were they were trying to
the home is the most holy thing in american society. it's what their entire way of life is built around, millions upon millions of single-family homes with white picket fences. its complete insanity.
Closest I ever got to home invasion was when a drunk guy wandered into my house from a street festival. When he realised were he was, he very sheepishly apologised and left.
It's part of the rugged individualism and personal responsibility narrative. It feeds into the atomization of people in the US.
Nobody is going to help you and you don't want to rely on the government to save you. It's your neighbor who's going to steal everything you have if given the chance. Other people are jealous of what you have. If you don't lock your door or buy a security system, it's your fault if something bad happens.
And like others have said in this post, there's the fantasy of being able to use your guns in a legal way. You get to do acceptable violence and you prove that you were right for not trusting people if somebody breaks in.
But another aspect of this fear is whether you're part of a marginalized group. If you're Black in a white neighborhood, you can't rely on the police and you might not be able to rely on your neighbors to have your back.
There's a lot of fucked up unconscious things going on in US society.
We ate absolutely terrified of an unknown black or brown person sitting in their car or walking through our neighborhood. Idk if they limit what you can view but you should check out nextdoor.com for some insight into the insanity.
Meanwhile I've left the door unlocked every place I've lived with only one exception.
I had a coworker that was scared of this so he had tens of thousands of dollars in guns. He used to brag about it all the time. He was robbed because he had tens of thousands in guns that everyone knew about because he bragged about them all the time. Had he been home having a big pile of guns would have done him no good.
a lot of people say that a shotgun is the best tool for the job, but honestly what you need is armor piercing rounds. preferably in a handgun format since you'd ostensibly be dealing with the close quarters of a tiny apartment. honestly, if they don't have armor on you can probably just talk to them if this imaginary scenario happens at all.
Lots of gun owners want literally nothing more than to have a justifiable reason to kill somebody.
In their mind somebody breaking into their house means they get to use any amount of force they can muster.
My old boss literally would talk about how he leaves his door unlocked because "if they get passed the dogs then they have me to worry about"
And I'd like to see what a burgler would do to an out of shape 70 year old who fell asleep drunk in his recliner at 10 o clock with fox news playing loudly on the TV.
The closest I've come to a "home invasion" was these two girls in my neighborhood, around 14 or so, would target single guys in the neighborhood and walk into their homes and take whatever they wanted and then tell the dudes that if they said anything they'd basically tell everyone that they were there because the guy lured them into their homes to assault them. They did this to like, 2 guys, one being the guy who lived in an apartment next to my father's house. He was a younger Latino man, possibly an illegal immigrant so I can imagine him being freaked the fuck out by this with no recourse. This was about 20 years ago. IIRC I think they eventually fucked up and tried it once when one of the men had a girlfriend or something over and she wasn't about it. Not sure if they were arrested or just got slapped up a bit by a very angry woman but I just know it stopped.
Anyways, a gun would not have helped in this situation and while those girls were absolute fools and did not realize that their little scheme could have ended very poorly for them they wouldn't have deserved to die for what they did. Whenever I think about crime & punishment vs community-based solutions I always think there are a least a dozen community-based solutions to that issue that far outshine any traditional crime and punishment solution.
On the other side of things for new year's even of 2000 my friends and I had a fun psychedelic party at his apartment building. One friend about 3 hours after taking 4 hits of LSD walks out of the apartment. This surprised us because for the past hour he had been laying in a bean bag twitching and mumbling to himself and we only figured it out because suddenly he wasn't there anymore and the front door was open. The rest of us, also out of our gourds, go looking for him. Turns out he walked down the hall and into another apartment that was unlocked. He was just standing in the dark in their front room spaced the fuck out. We quietly grabbed him and ushered him out closing the door behind us. The people in that apartment never knew.
The idea of a home invasion allows Americans to fantasize about murdering the invaders of "their sacred property" and getting away with it. It also incorporates the idea of shooting someone to death as well for that added second amendment veneration.
When I was growing up, there was a couple a street over from me. Nice area too.
Definitely made me paranoid as a kid, but I'm also incredibly paranoid of a house fire. I genuinely feel like if all my important shit burned up I'd probably unalive myself over going through the hoops to prove I'm allowed to rent an apartment.
Also still paranoid about someone breaking into my place. I've got a handful of items that are irreplaceable and not that valuable and idk if I could forgive someone for stealing it then trashing it for an easy buck or two.
I did have a drunk guy walk into my apartment and fall asleep on the floor one time in college. That was weird but funny, very obviously another student. just sorta nudged him and he went on his way.
Not American so can't give any insight into this, but I do have a kinda funny anecdote about an attempted break-in if you want it.
spoiler
Without giving anymore details to help dox myself, I grew up in a part of Wales that got ratfucked by deindustrialization. Big time economic deprivation and a local economy fueled almost entirely by drug dealing had lead to some incredibly desperate people. Desperate to enough to rob folks who had fuck all themselves.
There'd been some attempted break ins a couple of weeks before and the last one had almost been caught in the act and had even once left some their tools behind in a rush to avoid being seen.
My family were all out for the day enjoying the good weather, except me, I had my GCSEs next week and was cramming as much revision as possible.
The crapper is close to the back door and as I'm taking a shit, I hear a noise. At first it's a scraping that makes me worry that the rats from the derelict house down the street had began to widen their scavenging to nearby houses again, and made a silent note to myself to put the rat traps back down. But then I hear a thump at about level with the upper hinges on the back door.
Now I'm scared shitless and really not in a position to fight well if whoever's out there manages to break in, so I try to hide the fear in my voice and tell them to knock it off. Unfortunately it's hard for me to raise my voice at the best of times and as nervous as I am now, all I can manage is a hoarse whisper. So they likely don't hear me over the sound of whatever they're doing out there.
The toilet room is tiny, about as wide as your average shower cubicle, so I'm able to reach forward and open the door. Across from me, lying on the floor is my dad's claw hammer, 'cos he'd been fixing the washing line yesterday. I extend my leg enough to grab it with my foot and drag it towards me, then throw it at the back door as hard as I could.
THUMP!
A startled pause outside, now's my chance.
I try to sound threatening, but all I can come out with is a somewhat wavering "Fuck off!"
I don't know if they heard me this time, or the thump spooked them too much, but the sound of them legging it back out of the garden, told me they were gone for now.
I did once when I was not even 20 when I lived on my own in a shitty neighborhood. I chased the scraggly dude out with a hammer. My house was then burglarized a few days later when I wasn't home, so I can guess who did it. I'll probably always be a bit paranoid about them because of that, but I still don't own a bunch of guns or turn my house into a heavily surveilled bunker because I know that it's extremely unlikely now that I live in a nicer area. I agree with a lot of the other posts, some people just fantasize about being able to legally shoot someone and there is likely some bonus racism in there.
I’ve had strangers just walk into apartment I’ve lived in. Apparently the previous tenant was letting people stay there that they didn’t know.
I’ve been burgled before. Everything got recovered but it turned out the person doing it had piles and piles of guns and a few of the other people hit said they were armed when they did it.
I’ve had stuff stolen from me in the house that I currently live in. They thought I wasn’t there.