Well let’s see.
A friend of mine had his house broken into while he and another friend were there, they were held up at gunpoint and pistol whipped and had their safe (among other things) robbed. We had to glue his head back together because we didn’t have money for stitches (of course they’d just been robbed so that didn’t help, but also good ol’ no insurance played a part in that). They moved, cops never caught the guys. Wasn’t “their enemy,” was just a home invasion. He had locks too, and they didn’t help.
A little later in that same neighborhood, another friend of mine was selling some weed to a guy (I know I know he was a master criminal because weed was illegal so he deserved to die or whatever) and the guy stabbed him and stole the weed. He did have to go to the hospital but he luckily did live. Big ol’ scar on his gut now forever though and I don’t think it was worth it for the story. Wasn’t my friend’s enemy (actually we thought dude was cool, not a friend but an aquaintance), until he stabbed him of course.
I moved from that neighborhood to another across town, and luckily we only had people stealing from unlocked cars there, but we did hear gunshots in the distance every night and I found a crushed .40sw round right next to my mailbox that someone must have dropped doing hoodrat shit. Thankfully nothing happened beyond that, but had it, it never hurts to be prepared. None of them were my enemy either, and they never decided to make me one.
Moved from there after a while to a “safer” (the heroin dealers live in the next apartments over, not my direct complex, so it’s “safer” kinda sorta bur we get some bleed off) neighborhood I’m in now. Went to the store at one point in 2019, and in the parking lot a guy pulled a knife on me and my then-gf. Luckily after all the previous experiences and a few other close calls, I had bought a gun and got a permit to carry it. I moved my concealment and put the hand on the grip, and he turned and walked away. Instead of being stabbed or whatever he wanted to do, I bought bread. I call that a win, and thankfully without even having to fire a shot. No clue who that guy was, definitely wasn’t “my enemy” until y’know the whole knife thing put us at odds immediately upon meeting.
I’m also nice to people, I also “don’t have any enemies,” so are my friends, but it seems not everyone needs to think of you as an “enemy” before they attack you, some I thought were friendly acquaintances, some my friends or I had never even met before, in fact not one time has it been “well I was mean to that guy so now he pulled a knife,” not one has been “our enemies.” The world only works like that on procedural dramas, in the real world ime it is usually someone you know and are ostensibly friendly with, or someone you’ve never met.
Hell, bonus story, once I was taking out the trash to the dumpster and walked past a guy on the way, so I politely said “hey hows it going,” y’know as ya do, and he responded “Fuck you american you come to africa we kill you” yadda yadda blah blah. I laughed and said “ok you have a nice day too” and kept going, luckily he walked off down the street shouting about killing me instead of actually trying to, but yeah maybe that helps illustrate that being polite and not having “enemies” isn’t necessarily the magical protective ward you think it is. No clue what was wrong with that dude (had to be something, that isn’t a normal reaction to “hey how’s it going,”) I’m just glad he didn’t get more violent than threatening my life (like, threatening is fine, just don’t start acting on it), but whatever is wrong with him it wasn’t my fault lol.
So yeah it’s not all about “enemies,” nor “locks” even if you were an agoraphobe.















Was that recent? They all did around here too but stopped, and we have a lot of hunters too. Hopefully they still do!