“Minneapolis police were called to [Thomas Karl] Sonnenberg’s home after he called 911 to report a man had come to his door seeking refuge from people who had been chasing him with a bat,” myfoxtwincities.com reports. “Charging documents state Sonnenberg allowed Parker into his home and locked the door behind him. Both were in the kitchen when Sonnenberg called 911 at about 11:46 p.m.” Yes I know: stop right there. Why would you let a strange man into your house at 11:46pm? Especially one who claims he’s in the middle of a violent confrontation? “Wait out there I’ll call the police,” would have been the correct response. Didn’t happen here, with tragic consequences . . .
Investigators say Parker tried to confuse the dispatcher by grabbing the [phone] and giving police the wrong address before grabbing the gun Sonnenberg wore on his hip.
Roughly 5 minutes later, a Minneapolis officer responding to the initial call knocked on the door but did not get an answer. After looking through a window, that officer saw Sonnenberg’s body slumped over a chair in the kitchen.
Set aside Mr. Sonnenberg’s fatal mistake. Even without entertaining unfamiliar midnight callers, the idea that your home is an impenetrable fortress is as stupid as it sounds. Just as “gun free zones” like schools, restaurants and pubic buildings are only “gun free” as long as bad guys observe the signs (as if) your home is only a sanctuary from potentially deadly villains until it isn’t.
Home carry people. Do so discreetly . . .
When it’s just me and the kid or close friends, I wear my outside-the-waistband RKBA Kydex holster outside my shirt. It’s more comfortable and it normalizes guns for my sprog. When there are workmen about or the doorbell rings, I cover my gat and that’s that. There’s no need to surrender the element of surprise or present a target of opportunity to someone with nefarious intent.
Equally, if you don’t know your visitor well, keep your distance. The more perceived/potential danger, the greater the distance should be. Carrying the gun on his person eliminated the need to acquire the gun but did not relieve him of the need to think tactically. Mr. Sonneberg should have left Devon Parker outside of a locked door, retreated further into the house and unholstered his firearm.
There’s nothing wrong with wearing a retention holster for home carry and/or toting a gun with an external safety to create an extra layer of security – provided you train with your rig and don’t mind the bulk. But if you find yourself in a life-or-death struggle for a gun with a bad guy in your home, you’re WAY behind the curve. Best not to go there in the first place.
As I sit distracting myself on TTAG while I am supposed to be studying for tomorrow’s pathology exam, I have a 300BLK SBR next to me as well as my trusty CZ. A gun is only useful if its in your reach.
I think the older gentleman simply failed to maintain control of his weapon, almost understandable given the chaotic nature of the incident, if I were in that situation, my gun would be in hand. Sad. We can all learn from this.
I am supposed to be studying for tomorrow’s pathology exam
Don’t complain. It could have been a proctology exam.
The only thing that bugs me about hog extermination in Texas is how many land owners charge you for the privilege. Charge me to hunt deer or birds on your land? No problem. You put time and money into game management profit away. Charge me to do you a favor and kill hogs? I wish I could get away with that with my exterminator. “Will, you can come in my yard and kill fire ants and scorpions, but it’s gonna cost ya’ two hundred bucks. Extra if you kill any mice.”
Having grown up on a ranch, I raised 4H pigs as a kid and am probably more familiar with them than 98% of Americans. Pigs are incredibly intelligent and therefore, have more successful hunting strategies than most of their competition. Wild pigs are also very aggressive, destructive and dangerous. I have absolutely no problem with culling an invasive species that has gone out of control and I have zero problem with Texas hunters killing them with machine guns shot from helicopters.
As far as animal extremists like PETA, they are misguided terrorists and I am all for doing anything that pisses them off. These pigs are not Babe, they are big, aggressive tractors and earth movers who will root up and mow down anything in their path. Kill ’em all, they are a blight on the natural landscape.
I am actually disappointed that Nick couldn’t hunt them with a 1919, Ma Deuce or a Mini Gun, that would be a lot exciting to watch than a mere full auto M4 or whatever AR variant he was using. More clips, they are interesting to watch and frustrate anti-gunners so what’s not to like? Here in California, we gun owners are subjected to having to watch morons like Senator De Leon talk about things that don’t exist like Ghost Guns, paybacks are a bitch antis.
This is what comes with government. Time to rethink it.
I have a steel storm door with a dead bolt between me and my visitor at the front door. And if someone is banging on my door at midnight. It’s
A) get kids to the master bath with mom and her 9.
B) me take defensive position and master bedroom door near top of stairs with phone and my 9.
C) Dial 911 and let the boys in blue peace keep
D) take aim for any miscreant that takes one step on my stair
Skip the 9 and use a 12 instead.
Let any nay-Sayers gun up and take out the thousands of hogs themselves and then harvest all the meat. If someone could figure out how to harvest these buggers they would be a billionaire and could help end hunger in the country.
What if it’s against the NRA? To (2) the NRA , we’re hoping for another ( ×2) awb (94)
Too bad none of the officers were properly armed. If one of them had the sense to fire a double barrel shotgun into the air, problem solved. Cops have a tough job.
Did Kent Brockman tell you that? You know it didn’t really say NRA4EVER on the register.
Yea, I open carry. Intimidating the teenager behind the counter at McDonald’s is simply the most awesomest fun one can have without going to jail.
So it’s like a belly band only costs twice as much?
Manly men huh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNwRa_A7VDc
For years I’ve quashed the impulse to submit a reply on TTAG, ever. Forty comments alone would certainly not normally rise to any threshold for changing my pattern of not setting something straight.
However, because of the number of those that might have seen this TV commercial, me thinks it might be worth while to toss this on your digital table. But when Ralph submits, and suggests a thought that which might lead others astray, then it might time to IChing myself. The only reason I have not erected a physical altar to Ralph in my humble abode, is the simple fact that God could not possibly reside in Massachusetts. When my time is short, after reading some particular article, I merely fast scroll to Ralph’s distinct avatar to see what he’s got to add to the topic d’jour.
I humbly submit:
2007 ICD-9-CM Diagnosis Code 294.11
“Dementia in conditions classified elsewhere with behavioral disturbance”
The license plate: 2NRA294 is merely the simple fact that the addressed body, the NRA, is being called out as, well, clinical, and with a larger brush stroke, y’all too.
Keeping the advertising theme alive, in the words of Bartles and James, “….. and thank you for your support”. And for those that are already pounding their keyboards, go cite yourself.
Oh, this is truly one of the great sites on the web.
Do Not Adjust Your Set
My set of what? And why can’t I control my own horizontal and my own vertical? And what if I have an itch?
And why can’t the best trained and most highly paid cops in the world tell the difference between a preteen with a Super Soaker and a terrorist with an AK?
Maybe it’s because they’re only the paid highly-paid (at least in big cities) and most certainly ARE NOT the most “highly trained” (unless they’re SWAT and even then…).
I don’t carry but I’ve heard that small of back carry is discouraged because of possible spinal damage in a fall. Is that not true?
March Guns and Ammo has a detailed review. Seems like a nice enough gun but I’ll stay with my Walter PPQ M2. It hides under a t-shirt in a TTgunleather holster. Or a G36 in a Brommeland IWB. Never understood what a gun looks like has to do with anything. I’ll carry a gun that looks like a pumpkin as long as it goes bang when I need it to.
You sure are very condescending when talking about your customers. Perhaps that might better explain why you’re not having as many.
Massachusetts gun laws are awesome!! No, really, honestly, they are.We set the standard by which all other states should be measured. Irrational, arbitrary and capricious doesn’t even begin to explain the situation here in the (former) Cradle of Liberty. And you ain’t seen nothing yet. The legislature is dead set on making them “even better”, for the children.
Why do I still live here? Who the Hell knows.’Tis a puzzle.
I actually think you are shooting a fair amount of bull yourself. The jam is not the bullets fault. Also you completely disreguard the the damage the trocars inflict. It also seems that the depth actually is better for hitting organs. I do bethink these guys are probably some smart guys that love to shoot and actually came up with a facinatingly new bullet. They probably didn’t properly fund the marketing and they got something g they shouldn’t have let get out there. I hope they learn from it and refine the bullet. I am buying some when I can get my hands on them. I think you were passed about the marketing and your review is clearly biased by that.
Nicks right. These are wily, tough, fast-breeding, wary night feeders with better noses than your hunting dog, that eat everything, including one another, and devastate crops and sensitive native habitat equally.
The USFS hosted a scoping letter on options for how to hunt wild hogs in San Diego county before they became any more of a problem (estimates between 300-1100 animals) and after considering all inputs, running it thru the EIR process, they came down to hunting from helicopters, as most effective and most humane, for any areas they couldnt get in to set up traps. Pretty much the same way they hunted wild pigs off the Channel Islands.
Hunters were pissed because they werent included into the party, and in fact excluded in op areas where the pro hunters at USDA were concerned they would spook sounders to move, instead of allow the pro hunters to shoot them with silencers and night sights.
PETA types were upset of course, and so were landowners and ranchers, who thought it was too little too late,
but it got approved anyway, and the whole thing was ready to go at a cost of some ridiculous amount of money, then it just went away. No idea why- guessing the budget.
But the point being its probably the most efficient way to conduct depredation efforts for a problem species. And from the literature I’ve read in various places, including some of the bio guys in their conferences, the consensus is that, yes, hunters can help, but they cant solve the problem, not even close.
I hear from the guys running Teton Ranch up in Kern County, middle of CA, where the pigs have been longest, having been introduced by Mr Hearst at Hearst castle as Russian boars for sport- is even with heavy organized guided hunts they are barely keeping even with population growth.
So, while “fair chase” is the ethic for sporting hunting, like deer, thats not what this is- its eradication, and even helicopter hunting is not doing enough to bring it down, in any sustainable decrease.
u guys need to make a rossi circuit judge in 556/223
OOOOR A 45/70 all the way around the cylinder
Didnt expect this would get anywhere. Oh well. Still no metal detectors so carry on.
#1 reason i am in a post office, usps money order to buy another gun off gunbroker
Sonnenberg acted naively. He should have known better.
He’s dead, but hey, at least he won’t be accused of “racism”.
Better question:
They’re claiming that they blitzed Senators with calls and correspondence.
That may or may not be true.
Did anyone here do likewise to SUPPORT the measure?
We may have numbers on our side…but how many of those huge numbers regard it as their TOP issue?
I know plenty of people who think the gun laws are too onerous. But not many of them will make that their top issue, and could therefore vote for a Democrat (very likely to be a grabber, if not, will vote in the legislature to put a grabber in the leadership position) for other reasons more important to them than the gun issue.
We have an interesting situation in CO where a majority of the State Senate (18 out of 35) has co-sponsored the mag limit repeal. In other words, if it came to a floor vote in our state senate (which we’ve done some corrective maintenance on over the past few months) it would pass. However, one of the co-sponsors is a Dem, and voted for their current Senate President (who won, 18 to 17)–who assigned the bill to the “kill committee” which is loaded with Dems who will never lose an election in their heavily liberal districts. It comes up before the committee Monday. We will see what happens, but I am certainly not holding my breath.
Remember that Audi did the commercial in last year’s Super Bowl with the police state enforcement of environmental virtue. Too big a carbon footprint? Gestapo goons are on you like white on rice. Drive an eco-awesome Audi? You get to cut the line at the police checkpoint.
So, I am not thinking that they are saying anything pro-freedom here. Their intended audience is white, upper-middle class urban elitists who drive expensive cars.
The General Rule for ‘Problem Solving by Government’ states that:
“For every problem those in ‘government’ attempt to solve, a minimum of at least two other problems are created; and
more often than not, at least one of the two problems created by government didn’t previously exist at all.”
This is the firearms equivalent of continuing to breed unabated during a famine. We need Obama (obviously) to place a hiatus on the manufacture and sale of any firearms that consume rimfire ammunition until stocks of rimfire ammunition recover to pre-panic levels.
I would think the last place anyone would want to sneak up on an try to get the element of surprise is at a paranoid dirt bag dope dealers house. Sad situation but the Grand Jury only did what they had to do. This guy is toast anyway, especially in Texas.
It’s funny, they’re still finding live ordinance in much of Europe from WWI and a single rifle round in an English garden prompts that sort of reaction?