Car alarms.

Cops e-mail each other advice. I suppose every profession does, but I don’t get professional advice from anyone else.

We e-mail advice on SOPs, warnings and alternative tactics. The biggest thing I see coming through my Inbox each day, though, is safety advice for non-cops.

This is, I suppose, logical — Goddess only knows how many of the General Public have walked up to me and asked my advice for keeping safe, so I would imagine the same thing has happened to every other officer out there.

Some of the advice, though, is definitely regional.

Case in point: the latest Advice For The General Public.

If you have a car alarm, get a spare alarm fob and leave it next to the bed.

If someone attempts to break into your house, punch the panic button on the fob. A car alarm going off in the neighborhood tends to grab people’s attention.

Especially grouchy people who are trying to sleep at three in the morning, but maybe that’s the point.

Anyhoo, the premise is that your basic critter hates anything which will draw attention to him or his activities, and if the car in the driveway of the home he is breaking into is honking the horn, flashing the lights and yodelling up-and-down the alarm scale, he’s probably going to go look for a softer target.

I can see the logic behind this.

How-some-ever, I feel that if a car alarm going off in the driveway is attention-getting, the shotgun blast that punts the critter into his next incarnation is even more attention-getting — with the added feature of removing that particular critter from the predator pool of your area.

Meh.

It’s not a bad idea, and can be a wonderful addition to a layered defence — punch car alarm button, call 911, gather all family in master bedroom, point shotgun at door — but unless I was living in one of those socialist dystopias popping up on the coasts like mushrooms in a midden I wouldn’t rely solely upon it for protection.

There are others who may feel differently — particularly those who (for whatever reason) don’t feel comfortable around guns, or don’t feel comfortable with the idea of High Velocity Critter Control as a Social Service.

In those cases, you might want to take a look at this use of the car alarm.

LawDog

And the ranks grow.
Operation Neptune

24 thoughts on “Car alarms.”

  1. Fortunately for me, I be in Houston. Car alarms won’t do much but that “High Velocity” critter control works wonders and thankfully, its legal still here more or less. You get the eye, jump through some hoops, have to be a good Texan for a bit, that kind of thing. But, I fear in a place like Mass. or Cali. there might be a great deal MORE problems for the folks doing the varmin control and improving the general gene pool of the species. I was told, mind you this just be fence talk, that one poor farmer ended up losing the farm because he only wounded the critter trying to burgle his home for the THIRD time so, might be good advice to check with the local judge before using that particular method of defense.

    Apart from that, do you prefer 10, 12, 16 or 20 guage as a delivering method? *wink*

  2. I’m not so sure. I think the average person’s reaction upon hearing a car alarm is to do his level best to ignore it.

  3. My alarm of choice is a 120lb German Shepard named Ralph…

    My secondary is a Mossberg 590A1 with alternating 00 buck and rifled slugs…

    Tertiary would be the car alarm, that way the neighbors could pick off, er… pick up the pieces…

  4. If I was waiting and listening for a zombie to come through the bedroom door, I wouldn’t want the distraction and noise of a car alarm going off in the driveway.

    Besides which, our vehicles don’t have alarms.

  5. Sheesh. That’s kind of the thinking that says “Why not just have an extra set of keys that you can toss to the critter?” So hopefully he’ll just take the car and leave you your life.

    And make sure that all your valuables are heaped together in a convenient place, so the critter doesn’t have to rough you up too much finding everything.

    I’m sorry, but the thought that people can’t/shouldn’t/may not defend themselves is disturbing.

    I’m with Lawdog. “High Velocity Critter Control” indeed.

  6. If you really want to do something effective that’s hard to ignore, wire in a 120DB exterior alarm horn to a pair of panic buttons next to the front door, and your bed.

    You dont need to make any more permanent modifications to your house than a cable installer would (actually less), and you don’t need a phone line or an alarm permit.

    If you want to get all fancy, you can wire them into a couple sets of security floodlights too.

  7. I’ve never seen anyone pay any attention to a car alarm unless it had been going off for an hour or so…

    I prefer your shotgun solution, where applicable, though mine is actually a lovely little Kimber Pro Carry in .45ACP. 🙂

    Two 230gr Hydrashoks to the chest, one to the head, call for the Goblin Cleanup Squad to haul away the carcass unless you can find someone to have it stuffed for you.

    I think that would make the best deterrent…Goblin 2 breaks in 6 months later…”Is that Earl? He looks so…life-like..except the eyes…Something not right about the eyes. Hmm. Maybe we should try another neighborhood.”

    Orion

  8. Anymore, we hear car alarms all the time around here. It don’t seem to mean much because some folks set their’s so sensitive you can just walk by a car and it’ll go off. And then there’s the jerks that have the alarm that says “step *away* from the vehicle”, so a bunch of idiot kids will run up and touch the car just to hear it talk.

    Goblin control… I’d say get 911 on the horn and be ready to shoot while you’re talking. For whatever reason, there’s plenty of times when somebody’s car alarm goes off 500+yds across the creek and up the next hill and it really don’t mean anything beyond just another loud noise. I wouldn’t want to depend on it to draw attention. There’s plenty of shooting done around here too… between hunting and general target shooting… it don’t mean anybody got killed or had to defend themselves.

    mustanger98 on THR

  9. There’s a guy here in our neighborhood that just recently learned that motorcycles passing by will set off his alarm: coming home at 2am, and setting it off as we went by, was amusing…

    Thanks, but I want something to REALLY catch folks attention: the sounds of gunfire (from 12 ga and .45) seems to draw said attention FAR better.

    Stuffing the now deceased critter may look good on paper, but I think the older version (head on a pike in the front yard) works better…

  10. I love the smell of freshly ventilated snooping critter in the morning…it smells like…victory.

    The next morning it smells like dead critter.

  11. It’s a great idea. I’ll add it to my list.

    I’ve used the panic button to screw with people that I see hanging around my vehicle for no good reason.

  12. Anyone been 10 feet or less from a klaxon when it goes off. up 3 to 5 feet without flexing. BHWAA HA HA Mark C

  13. That’s IT!

    When you start your alter-ego gunblog (same light as Tam’s “Arms Room”) you can call it “High Velocity Critter Control! It’s perfect!

    Consequently, I will be pilfering that particular phrase from your vocabulary. So thanks!

    tweaker

  14. “one of those socialist dystopias popping up on the coasts like mushrooms in a midden”

    What a great turn of phrase.

  15. I don’t remember the last time I heard a car alarm and actually thought there might be something untoward going on. The damned things go off so often for no good reason that they’ve become utterly useless.

  16. It’s called a layered defense. By your logic, you shouldn’t lock your doors at night because you can just shoot anyone who wanders in.

    I can understand having a firearm for protection, but it really should be a last resort to take anyone’s life. Thieves tend to prefer stealth, and don’t want even the risk of being seen. Given the choice, I’d use the car alarm and save gunplay as plan B. You replace the carpeting less often that way.

  17. Y’all are clueless. Get a fuckin’ cannon. One of those old Civil War ones. Prime it and load it with ball bearings or pachinko balls…

    Then…

    Aim it at the only door or window you have in your house that isn’t sand bagged…

    Then, set it up with an electronic ignition, button style…

    Then, have your family hide behind it, 24/7…

    If anybody tries any funny stuff…

    Blow their fuckin’ heads clean off, and their torso’s too…

    Yeah…

    That’s how you do it…

  18. I see Scott from Oregon has just shown us what a clueless moron he is.

  19. I agree, layers of protection afford the best chance of survival.
    My set up:

    1-House alarm with battery backup.
    2-75lb Lab not pure bred.
    3-12 gauge pump with OO buck.
    4-Wife with cell phone in one hand and her S&W 340CT .357mag in the other.

    If you are a perp you just walked into a whirlwind of shit.

    Mike

  20. Dear Anonymous,

    Re: Scott from Oregon

    fa·ce·tious /fəˈsiʃəs/ [fuh-see-shuhs] –adjective
    1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally: a facetious remark.
    2. amusing; humorous.
    3. lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous: a facetious person.

    http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=facetious

    Yours Truly,
    Anonymous
    😉

  21. Hey Anonymous, Anonymous here again… what Scott from Oregon was trying to do is tell us all how unreasonably scared we all are. That may be facetious, but it’s also stupid on his part. We don’t arm ourselves out of fear or anger. Whoever may try to kill us can only successfully kill us once. We arm ourselves because we want to stay alive and keep our families and friends alive. Scott seems to think we want to live in a bubble and he’s shown his anti-gun self here before. I don’t know if you caught that post or not.

  22. Re: Scott from Oregon

    You have to understand that an ex-con such as Scott hates the law. Even though he was busted for white collar crime, the law, those that enforce it, and those that try to protect themselves against cons such as him are in line for his garbage. (I say him, but he has another side of to him which has caused many to refer to him as the “Skirt from Oregon”).

    “Skirt” has a long history in the blog-o-sphere, and I find it not unusual to stumble across him aagian, still at it out there.

  23. I’ll take a high velocity propelled critter deterrent as well as primed and loaded canines for home defense any day! However, as a rodent alert, a car alarm might be handy.

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