Tell 20/20 Your Story

eBratt · Apr 6, 2007

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ABC news is apparently looking for stories of guns used in self defense. I initially saw this on the Volokh Conspiracy (http://volokh.com/posts/1175890673.shtml). You can check out the ABC 20/20 page on the request and the form to submit your story at http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3015150 http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3015150 If you or someone you know have the story that we wish was on mainstream media regarding the lawful use of a gun, this may be a chance to share it.

BobCav · Apr 7, 2007

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Great find elb1179, I was just going to post that and saw you beat me to it!

With over 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year, there HAS to be some people around here that can offer stories! I know we have members here that have had the need. Let 20/20 know!!

Mike · Apr 7, 2007

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Let's go folks - contact them about your open carry experiences which may have DETERED crime or violence in your life.

UTOC-45-44 · Apr 10, 2007

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Mike wrote:

Let's go folks - contact them about your open carry experiences which may have DETERED crime or violence in your life.

Ok...coming home from work one day there was a 26" Uhaul truck sitting outside my house facing the wrong direction ( meaning the wrong side of the road ).

I had a bad feeling cuz there was a gentleman sitting in the truck with full view INTO my House. I know that I wasn't moving and I was 99.99% positive that I no neighbors were moving either. I live across from a park so I have 1 house to my left, 1 behind me and 1 to the northwest of me ( north of the park). In other words I have my whole front towards a Park.

Bobcav, U will like this. Just like at Costco I stepped out of my Crowm Vic Pi (2000) with a Bar infront. I was OCing this day ,as well, with my 44 Ruger sitting in my Cogburn Triple K holster with ALL the shiny rounds (25 all-in-all):lol:. ( I LOVE THAT RIG ). I,on purpose went into the House and got the Mail Box key to across the street to get the Mail and the 6shooter sitting on my right hip. As I turned back to return to the House I got :what

eye contact) with the person in the Uhaul truck, he was about 30-40ft away. He looked at me, at my shooter and really quickly started the truck and took off and I MEAN TOOK OFFFAST :shock:.I veNEVER seen a Uhaul (26footer) drive 200-250ft so fast in my entire life before it turned.

After this I just smiled

givin it a quick stroke. ( the6shooter I mean:what: ).

Still having a bad feeling I went to the next door folks and asked them about the Uhaul truck, and they said that had the wrong address. I asked how long it's been parked there and they said about 10 min. This confirmed to me that something was not right. At this point I was happy the Feller in the truck saw my 6shooter.

In my suspicion he was one of those Guys that has a Truck with guys inside the cargo space waiting for a Go to go in and raid Houses.

The driver walks up to the House and ring the doorbell to see if somebody is Home goes back to the truck sit and wait for a few minutes to see if the coast is clear.

I guess I was lucky and arrived at the last minute

I was happy and of course I could be wrong about the truck but I feel that I made the Neighborhood a little bit safer at that very moment.

"with Great Power comes Great Responsibility"

BobCav · Apr 10, 2007

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Awesome story! See, OC prevents crime! I bet their eyes got as big around as 6" target circles when they saw that shiny rig and shiny bullets.

Just like John Freaking Wayne.....!

Too bad you didn't get the truck plate, could have called in a "suspisious vehicle" and let the police take a look-see in the back. Dollars to donuts it wasn't a delivery!

UTOC-45-44 · Apr 10, 2007

imported post

BobCav wrote:

Awesome story! See, OC prevents crime! I bet their eyes got as big around as 6" target circles when they saw that shiny rig and shiny bullets.

Just like John Freaking Wayne.....!

Too bad you didn't get the truck plate, could have called in a "suspisious vehicle" and let the police take a look-see in the back. Dollars to donuts it wasn't a delivery!

Yea, I did beat myself cuz of that ( the plate I mean )

Next time better luck I guess.

"Dollars to donuts it wasn't a delivery!" LOL

"with Great Power comes Great Responsibility"

unrequited · Apr 10, 2007

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20/20's submission form doesn't seem to be working for me, but I did submit my story through email to the address which comes up on the error page.

prb · Mar 7, 2011

Daddy's pistol saved the day

My story took place in my late teens. My parents built a new home in the country with no neighbors nearby & an unethical contractor billed them for windows they did not order and was trying to break into the house to steal them after repeatedly refusing to refund their money. He knew both my parents worked days & probably assumed that since it was summer, us kids would be elsewhere. When the contractor realized that I was home and taking care of 3 younger children, he began banging on windows & doors while making all kinds of crazy threats at the top of his lungs about how he would bring bodily harm to ALL of us if we did not unlock a door and let him in. His face was beat red with rage while he was slamming his fist against the glass sliding doors at the back of the home, hitting them so hard it appeared they would soon break. The 3 little kids were totally terrified & sobbing in near hysteria. Scared half to death, I called my Dad at work & told him what was going on.... all the time while standing with only a sliding glass door between the 4 of us and a man who appeared to be insane with rage and intent on doing harm. My Dad, an avid hunter, had taught all his children how to properly and safely handle guns, and told me to go and get the pistol he kept hidden in the house for emergency situations & point it in the general direction of the man on the other side of the glass doors who was still ranting and raving and beating on the glass, and yell at him "get off the property NOW!" I was frightened to be put in that position but even more frightened to do nothing, seeing how enraged the crazy man was on the other side of the door & hearing him threaten to literally kill all of us once he got inside .... and now he was trying to pull the glass doors out of their frame in order to get inside. So I laid the phone down with Dad still on the line, and quickly retrieved the pistol and did exactly what I had been instructed to do. The crazy nut case who'd been threatening to kill all of us ran as fast as he could to get into his truck and high tail it out of there. To this day, I have no doubt that that man would have indeed hurt all of us if he had gotten into the house. Anyone would think likewise had they been there and seen his crazy behavior & maniacal appearance, and heard his threats. I'm very grateful that I had a father who not only took the time to teach his children how to safely handle & use weapons, and to respect them, but also had the courage to advise me of what to do over the phone & confidence in me to handle the situation appropriately in order to maintain everyone's safety. I don't like living in a world that makes weapons necessary for protection, but I definitely do recognize that I live in a world in which it IS sometimes necessary to bear arms for personal safety. Anyone who takes a little bit of time to look back through history will quickly see that passing laws against weapons has NEVER caused the bad guys to surrender their weapons... it only leaves the good guys unarmed. It's time we learn better from what history has taught us. Our forefathers understood that all too well & that's WHY they laid a foundation for this country that would assure it's people the right to bear arms.

4angrybadgers · Mar 9, 2011

This thread is nearly 4 years old - why the hell did you dredge it up from the grave?!?
Spend some time inserting paragraph breaks into your story. A huge block of text is very hard to read, and some (many?) folks may not even bother to read it, like me.

1245A Defender · Mar 10, 2011

holy crap!!!

4angrybadgers said:
This thread is nearly 4 years old - why the hell did you dredge it up from the grave?!?

Spend some time inserting paragraph breaks into your story. A huge block of text is very hard to read, and some (many?) folks may not even bother to read it, like me.

Wow right you are.
ive been around the forum for awhile, and got used to watching for necro posts,
but ill be damned if i didnt miss the date,
and read his wall of text yesterday without thinking!

my bad!!!
wanna bet he ever posts again?

Claytron · Mar 10, 2011

4angrybadgers said:
This thread is nearly 4 years old - why the hell did you dredge it up from the grave?!?

Spend some time inserting paragraph breaks into your story. A huge block of text is very hard to read, and some (many?) folks may not even bother to read it, like me.

paragraph breaks? is this a gun forum or some nancy ass typing competition?

Im not a super intelligent person and i made my way through the story just fine, not sure why you had trouble.

In this day and age, hard as it might seem to some types of people, not EVERYONE gets the same education as others. Keep that in mind next time you go out of your way to make a post for the sole reason of being a jerk to someone for something like their spelling or grammar.

1245A Defender · Mar 10, 2011

well,,,

Claytron said:
paragraph breaks? is this a gun forum or some nancy ass typing competition?

Im not a super intelligent person and i made my way through the story just fine, not sure why you had trouble.

In this day and age, hard as it might seem to some types of people, not EVERYONE gets the same education as others. Keep that in mind next time you go out of your way to make a post for the sole reason of being a jerk to someone for somet
hing like their spelling or grammar.

funny thing,,,,
when i started typing, we had a "shift lever", a lever to move the carriage.
then the type writers got electric, and we had a "shift return" key.
then we got a computer, with no directions!!
it was a long time before I learned that the "enter" key did this stuff!!

i am not much smarter cause i use it, but it is easier to read.

4angrybadgers · Mar 10, 2011

Claytron said:
paragraph breaks? is this a gun forum or some nancy ass typing competition?

Im not a super intelligent person and i made my way through the story just fine, not sure why you had trouble.

In this day and age, hard as it might seem to some types of people, not EVERYONE gets the same education as others. Keep that in mind next time you go out of your way to make a post for the sole reason of being a jerk to someone for something like their spelling or grammar.

Wow, hitting the "Enter" key requires an education? That's news to me! I figured it only required a tiny bit of thought and one finger. I've met several folks who didn't even get through high school, that still know how to press "Enter" every now and then. The idea of breaking text into paragraphs has been around for centuries, probably millenia.

No, this isn't a typing competition. If I wanted to really be a jerk I could have pointed out MANY more issues, but I only mentioned the one that made his post a real pain to follow. I do expect people to put at least some effort into making their words readable and understandable. Doesn't have to be a Harvard-level essay, just put some thought into it. And no, that's not unreasonable.

And it's funny how you're the only one to bring intelligence into this. Your post merely furthers the evidence from your other posts that you're a complete jackass with no intention of engaging in constructive discussion. Into the ignore list you go!

Jack House · Mar 10, 2011

4angrybadgers said:
Wow, hitting the "Enter" key requires an education? That's news to me! I figured it only required a tiny bit of thought and one finger. I've met several folks who didn't even get through high school, that still know how to press "Enter" every now and then.

1245A Defender said:
funny thing,,,,
when i started typing, we had a "shift lever", a lever to move the carriage.
then the type writers got electric, and we had a "shift return" key.
then we got a computer, with no directions!!
it was a long time before I learned that the "enter" key did this stuff!!

i am not much smarter cause i use it, but it is easier to read.

BAM! Set, point, match.

HOWEVER. Breaking one's post into paragraphs is damned good advice and typically not always someone trying to be an ass. In this case, it would seem the person was being an ass, though.

Not everyone knows where and when a paragraph should start/stop, if you really want to help the user, then show him where he could have split his post into other paragraphs instead of trying to make him feel like a retard or something("I know people that never finished school that still know how to make a paragraph").

Aknazer · Mar 10, 2011

Jack House said:
BAM! Set, point, match.

HOWEVER. Breaking one's post into paragraphs is damned good advice and typically not always someone trying to be an ass. In this case, it would seem the person was being an ass, though.

Not everyone knows where and when a paragraph should start/stop, if you really want to help the user, then show him where he could have split his post into other paragraphs instead of trying to make him feel like a retard or something("I know people that never finished school that still know how to make a paragraph").

He didn't try to make him feel like a retard. The comment you're quoting was when he was responding to someone else and wasn't the first comment. While it was an interesting read, the poster should have known to how to use the enter key. I mean he did say that he called his father on the cell phone and those haven't been around a long time. Which means that he's fairly young and unless he's completely computer inept (HIGHLY unlikely) he would know what the "enter" button does. And given that he's younger he should also know about using paragraphs so that you don't get the TL

R effect.

I mean you don't even have to put in paragraphs where it always makes sense; simply breaking it up helps with reading. Now I understand not everyone knows online etiquette, but the original post was a fairly simple "you should use enter or else a lot of people simply won't read the post."

4angrybadgers · Mar 11, 2011

Jack House said:
BAM! Set, point, match.

HOWEVER. Breaking one's post into paragraphs is damned good advice and typically not always someone trying to be an ass. In this case, it would seem the person was being an ass, though.

Not everyone knows where and when a paragraph should start/stop, if you really want to help the user, then show him where he could have split his post into other paragraphs instead of trying to make him feel like a retard or something("I know people that never finished school that still know how to make a paragraph").

Fair enough, I did let my temper run out of hand a bit. My point was that it doesn't take great amounts of education to understand that stories are broken up into paragraphs - one can pick up on the idea of paragraphs just by reading a few books, articles, etc. 1245ADefender's post has enlightened me - I guess I always assumed that the "Enter" key was common knowledge. Blame my youth.

In my experience, quoting someone's post and editing it to show him how to split it into paragraphs, or where to place commas, etc., would be considered condescending. If someone asked I'd do it, but on other forums I've seen it done unasked and it was not taken well.

William Fisher · Mar 11, 2011

4angrybadgers said:
Fair enough, I did let my temper run out of hand a bit. My point was that it doesn't take great amounts of education to understand that stories are broken up into paragraphs - one can pick up on the idea of paragraphs just by reading a few books, articles, etc. 1245ADefender's post has enlightened me - I guess I always assumed that the "Enter" key was common knowledge. Blame my youth.

In my experience, quoting someone's post and editing it to show him how to split it into paragraphs, or where to place commas, etc., would be considered condescending. If someone asked I'd do it, but on other forums I've seen it done unasked and it was not taken well.

Shouldn't the first words of your paragraphs been started a space or two in such as follows:

...Fair enough, I did let my temper run out of hand a bit. My point was that it doesn't take great amounts of education to understand that stories are broken up into paragraphs - one can pick up on the idea of paragraphs just by reading a few books, articles, etc. 1245ADefender's post has enlightened me - I guess I always assumed that the "Enter" key was common knowledge. Blame my youth.
...In my experience, quoting someone's post and editing it to show him how to split it into paragraphs, or where to place commas, etc., would be considered condescending. If someone asked I'd do it, but on other forums I've seen it done unasked and it was not taken well. ?

4angrybadgers · Mar 11, 2011

William Fisher said:
Shouldn't the first words of your paragraphs been started a space or two in such as follows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph#Indenting

Depends on which style you use.

When writing documents, letters, etc. I usually indent each paragraph with the "Tab" key. On forums, I tend to use block paragraphs for several reasons:

The browser captures the "Tab" key to move the cursor to the next page item instead of inserting a tab character.
Readers may have different fonts and sizes set on their browsers, so the indent spacing that looks good to me may look really bad on their end.

Like I said, I don't expect graduate-level English major skills, just basic stuff like some form of indicating logical breaks in a post.

Aknazer · Mar 12, 2011

William Fisher said:
Shouldn't the first words of your paragraphs been started a space or two in such as follows:

...Fair enough, I did let my temper run out of hand a bit. My point was that it doesn't take great amounts of education to understand that stories are broken up into paragraphs - one can pick up on the idea of paragraphs just by reading a few books, articles, etc. 1245ADefender's post has enlightened me - I guess I always assumed that the "Enter" key was common knowledge. Blame my youth.
...In my experience, quoting someone's post and editing it to show him how to split it into paragraphs, or where to place commas, etc., would be considered condescending. If someone asked I'd do it, but on other forums I've seen it done unasked and it was not taken well. ?

Shouldn't it be "the first word" or "the first line" instead of "the first words?" Since technically you're only indenting that first word/line and everything else just kinda follows in after that. Also you both missed that it's supposed to be two spaces between a period and the next word (this holds true for colons as well).

But this isn't grammar class. He was simply pointing out that paragraphs makes something easier on the eyes, which in turn makes it easier to read, and thus more people are likely to actually read it.

Tell 20/20 Your Story

eBratt

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BobCav

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Mike

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UTOC-45-44

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BobCav

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UTOC-45-44

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unrequited

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prb

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4angrybadgers

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1245A Defender

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Claytron

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1245A Defender

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4angrybadgers

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Jack House

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Aknazer

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4angrybadgers

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William Fisher

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4angrybadgers

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Aknazer

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