Sounds like a rallying cry for the 2nd Amendment, doesn’t it? The “Armed Citizen” column of the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine prints several carefully verified and vetted stories like this each month. A growing number of these stories are not what they seem, however, and it’s unlikely that they will ever grace the pages of the NRA’s flagship publication. Why? Because many, if not most, home-invasion robberies involve drugs. Home-invasion robberies are risky business, for everyone involved, and only the most foolish, incompetent or intoxicated criminals will force entry into an occupied home unless they know that valuable, fungible and untraceable loot lies therein.
What constitutes “valuable, fungible, and untraceable loot?” Not guns. Guns are valuable, but dedicated ‘gun thieves’ are a rare breed. Guns are hard to steal if they’re properly stored, and once stolen they’re difficult to sell without drawing attention, and easily traced when recovered.
What about your Blue-Ray player or 60″ plasma? Nope; electronics are expensive when you and I buy them, but they don’t bring a lot of money to the skell who steals them. Pawn shops always run nice TVs through the police ‘hot list’, and they rarely give twenty cents on the dollar anyway.
This leaves cash and drugs. Particularly marijuana.
Hippie Lettuce is only slightly illegal in small quantities, completely legal for many medical users, and easily cultivated at home. And unlike guns or plasma sets, stolen marijuana has no serial numbers on it, and is unlikely to be reported to the police. Remember Line 11e of the ATF Form 4473: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana…..?” It is illegal for medical marijuana users to purchase firearms, so thieves tend to assume that they will not be armed.
The result: in my county, almost every single home invasion robbery in the last three years has involved drugs, usually marijuana. This case was one of them, as columbian.com reports.
Two men were hospitalized early Wednesday morning after they exchanged gunfire at a home in the Fircrest neighborhood.
A man who returned fire against an intruder was transported to an area hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to a Vancouver Police Department news bulletin.
The suspect was shot “multiple times,” police said. He suffered life-threatening injuries in the shootout at a home in the 1400 block of Northeast 131st Avenue.
It is unclear what exactly led to the shootout. Neither of the men have been identified.
Should the reader make it to paragraph sic (our of seven), the mystery surrounding the shooting becomes slightly less unclear . . .
The resident told police earlier in the evening he met a woman he brought back to his house.
Shortly after the woman left, at about 4 a.m., an unknown male came to the door displaying a gun and shot at the resident, according to police. The resident grabbed a nearby gun and fired back, hitting the suspect multiple times.
Police found a “number of marijuana plants” at the residence. There are no outstanding suspects.
I can fill in a few blanks, as I watched the suspect’s first appearance in court this morning.
According to court documents the homeowner, Rickie Landacre, was growing dope in his house. The woman he brought home was a prostitute from nearby Portland, Oregon named Sharita Martin.
While doing ‘the business’ with the homeowner, she cased his house and noticed the dope stash. When her transaction had been concluded, at about 4:00 a.m., she left and told Chuck Slanacker, her friend-pimp-whatver, that Landacre’s house was ripe for the picking.
Much Quentin Tarentino-style mayhem ensued. The would-be invader Slanacker was shot multiple times and is hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. The homeowner Landacre is alive and well (he only got winged in the exchange of gunfire) but may face serious criminal charges for manufacturing marijuana.
Either way, don’t look for this story in the “Armed Citizen” column. And don’t look for Gunsite or Thunder Ranch to offer a “Home Defense Tactics For Marijuana Growers” shooting course. Saying that, this is America . . .