Originally Posted by
Karl Marques
I had a break in last October. What a horrible feeling. When I walked in the place was trashed. They opened every possible drawer and cabinet and just threw everything onto the floor. Seemed like they were just looking for cash or anything they could hock for cash really quickly. They even stole the money from my kids piggy banks. Freakin' despicable. I had an alarm system too. As I'm sure you know there is a delay when you come in so that you have time to disarm. My delay was set to 30 seconds. That was way more than enough time for them to make a B line to the panel in the basement and rip the wires out of the system, rendering the alarm useless. I installed a steel frame door that's a lot harder to break down and shortened the delay on my system to 10 seconds. The steel frame door is a lot harder to kick down. With only 10 seconds it would be harder to get to the panel in time to disable it. I didn't have a dog at the time but I do now. I think that a simple bark would be enough to deter a would be burglar. As far as your guns are concerned, Just keep em locked up and out of sight. Once they're in they can do pretty much what they want. All you can do is try to deter or delay them. Unfortunately there are a lot of a-holes in the world. Some of them are your co-workers and neighbors that you shake hands with. You just never know. DTA