How safe are you when boondocking
My wife and I have never boondocked before, nor have we ever spent the night in a Walmart parking lot. We have always stayed in campgrounds or RV parks where we know we will be safe. We our consider...
Forum Discussion
I think nstate’s post was excellent in many respects, perhaps because it reflects my own experience to a degree although I’ve never been in LE. But my predilection to wander into unknown territory and the nature of my job and camping for 50 years has exposed me to a wide range of situations and people. And I think I developed a very good sense for “reading” those people and nstate is right, what you see is not necessarily what you get.
When I was 17 a couple of friends and I would drive far back into the hills of W VA and KY and just wander. Many years later I saw the movie “Deliverance” and thought, wow, we ran across people like that more than once. Were we lucky, or was it the fact we were armed to the teeth the reason we never had a problem doing that? One can draw their own conclusions, I’ve drawn mine.
I’ve had firearms since I was 15 and have spent 10 years teaching forearms safety to kids and adults. But I’m not in favor of a novice “carrying”. If they are, I don’t want them behind me.:) I had 4 sons and every one of them went through safety training at least three times, along with their close friends who were often at the house. I consider one class familiarization, but I want it imprinted on them, thus the multiple classes.
I’ve never had to draw a firearm in 50 years of camping, but there have been a couple of times when the warning bells were deafening and I was glad I had one. At home in the city it’s a far different story, I’ve had a burglar at gunpoint in my home and have on a few occasions waited patiently while someone tried to get in. And my DW sat at the kitchen table with my shotgun while two drunks did their best to kick the door down. Fortunately they couldn’t get in because they were very unlikely to have survived a shotgun blast at that range.
So while I don’t care if someone doesn’t want to carry, I do care if someone presumes to dictate whether I should or not. I write pianotuna’s statistic off as just another bogus “study” by a certain political spectrum and they’re rather notorious for them. The last one I saw regarded child deaths from firearms and it was sobering. Until you dug into the “study” and found “child” included people in their 20’s who were shot in drug wars and gang fights. Not what I consider children, but a phony study to influence the uninformed.
The fact is the more remote you are the safer you are. Cities and near cities are where most of the dirt bags congregate and that’s where you have the greatest risk of a bad experience. And that includes parking lots of various types unless they have security. As has been said many times, common sense on where you stop is most important. If your gut tells you something doesn’t seem right, move on to another location. And comments about not flaunting your cash or belonging is also good advice.
I wouldn’t worry about your safety boondocking at all. If carrying something puts your mind at ease, do it. I know some people who carry bats, knives and spray. The two former I consider useless because a bat is too unwieldy in an enclosed space. And both are useless if you confront multiple opponents which I think is the most likely scenario. But if you choose a gun consider that entails a LOT of responsibility, too. And knowledge of the many laws that apply to them depending where you go. So you need to shoot a lot and take periodic classes. Self defense has to be a conditioned response based on good training; it’s not an intellectual exercise.
When I was 17 a couple of friends and I would drive far back into the hills of W VA and KY and just wander. Many years later I saw the movie “Deliverance” and thought, wow, we ran across people like that more than once. Were we lucky, or was it the fact we were armed to the teeth the reason we never had a problem doing that? One can draw their own conclusions, I’ve drawn mine.
I’ve had firearms since I was 15 and have spent 10 years teaching forearms safety to kids and adults. But I’m not in favor of a novice “carrying”. If they are, I don’t want them behind me.:) I had 4 sons and every one of them went through safety training at least three times, along with their close friends who were often at the house. I consider one class familiarization, but I want it imprinted on them, thus the multiple classes.
I’ve never had to draw a firearm in 50 years of camping, but there have been a couple of times when the warning bells were deafening and I was glad I had one. At home in the city it’s a far different story, I’ve had a burglar at gunpoint in my home and have on a few occasions waited patiently while someone tried to get in. And my DW sat at the kitchen table with my shotgun while two drunks did their best to kick the door down. Fortunately they couldn’t get in because they were very unlikely to have survived a shotgun blast at that range.
So while I don’t care if someone doesn’t want to carry, I do care if someone presumes to dictate whether I should or not. I write pianotuna’s statistic off as just another bogus “study” by a certain political spectrum and they’re rather notorious for them. The last one I saw regarded child deaths from firearms and it was sobering. Until you dug into the “study” and found “child” included people in their 20’s who were shot in drug wars and gang fights. Not what I consider children, but a phony study to influence the uninformed.
The fact is the more remote you are the safer you are. Cities and near cities are where most of the dirt bags congregate and that’s where you have the greatest risk of a bad experience. And that includes parking lots of various types unless they have security. As has been said many times, common sense on where you stop is most important. If your gut tells you something doesn’t seem right, move on to another location. And comments about not flaunting your cash or belonging is also good advice.
I wouldn’t worry about your safety boondocking at all. If carrying something puts your mind at ease, do it. I know some people who carry bats, knives and spray. The two former I consider useless because a bat is too unwieldy in an enclosed space. And both are useless if you confront multiple opponents which I think is the most likely scenario. But if you choose a gun consider that entails a LOT of responsibility, too. And knowledge of the many laws that apply to them depending where you go. So you need to shoot a lot and take periodic classes. Self defense has to be a conditioned response based on good training; it’s not an intellectual exercise.
