Have you noticed drug camps at your favorite access points?
Here’s a place to post warnings for others about threats to the personal safety and ways to minimize your risks.
The media refuses to call them homeless criminals, so its up to the community to warn each other.
No none in my back yard yet.
Dangerous world now. I nevier. Leave the house without my knife on a lanyard which hangs from my pocket. I can yank it out like a gun fight and snap it open instantly. Guys at work jumped when I showed them.
I keep it near razor sharp.
You need something (s) in your car nowadays also.
Went to the store the other day and some guy was on something walking all crazy and yelling and cursing. He was talking to a woman but they was none around. 
. People were walking their dogs and some just walking. I hung out a while warning people. All but one went the other way just one guy crossed the street and continued past. I was video taping him and took some pictures. Thought of calling the cops but they wouldn’t bother speaking to him.
My guess tanked up but who knows, maybe two substances. No phone in his hands or ear buds when he was screaming . He left then came back around the corner.
Better to remove yourself from a situation rather than confrontation.
That said at times I’m my own worst enemy. 
Best is to always keep your mouth shut
Best but impossible at times for me.
No. Maintain situational awareness.
For some locations like around Redding, CA I only leave old cars at the put in and will pay someone to watch them.
Homelessness, addiction and mental illness are serious problems across the country. We all know that. They are inter-related, but they are not lifestyle choices. Do some sufferers commit criminal offenses? Absolutely. Would it help if the media called them all homeless criminals? Not one whit.
Until we as a society decide to tackle the root causes head-on, little will change. Until then, @ppine has the best advice: Maintain situational awareness … in shopping malls … at concerts … at sporting events … everywhere, even campgrounds and boat launches.
I think the Germans don’t have the problem because they would not tolerate it for five minutes. Our society encourages it and there is a whole industry built around addiction.
The most obvious answer seems to butt-hurt a lot of folks but it’s none the less true.
It goes BANG! Usually several times if needed.
Those living where the right has already been destroyed are reduced to skills with hand held cutting or impact weapons and the hope the enemy has nether higher levels of skill or simply doesn’t obey the law (Ya think???!!!???) and DOES have something that goes BANG .
Not PC? That’s correct.
That also means “not wrong”
Not “obvious”. There has never been a significant number of crimes averted because average untrained citizens with guns managed to wing or kill real or imagined perpetrators. In more cases than not, when a civvie pulls out a weapon they either miss, hit a bystander or have the gun taken by the criminal and used on them. And in more cases than “successful self defense”, an innocent or even family member is killed or injured.
No, more guns in more hands does NOT reduce crime or injured or dead victims. This was the case before stricter gun laws and is still the case. You are 20 times more likely to have yourself or a loved one injured or killed with a firearm if you own one than if you do not. And the majority of US FA deaths are self-inflicted. The facts are obvious.
Please go on. Tell us more.
Please give us the statistics and the sources you got then from.
You started out with the premise so please provide YOUR statistics for how often victims of crime defend themselves successfully with firearms. Waiting…
And while you struggle to back up your premise, here is some reading for ya:
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-make-us-safer-myth/
OK, I see your sources to start. Leftist originations with a dedicated purpose to skew the truth to try to prove their point. Never above lying outright, but in fact it’s often their 1st strategy.
Here are a few that I believe.
US Department of Justice to start out
(Please note I am not all that much more likely to believe any part of the US Government today than I am to believe any other leftist, but sources are souses. This one was compiled in 2010 before the current near total purge of top positions in all offices of government was done to replace all top leaders with ardent socialists. Today the US Government within most of it’s agencies is often in lockstep with various Communist nations I used to ‘visit’ and is using the very same tactics and criminal policies they did. So I personally do not see published data from the Government as valid simply because it’s published by therm. I say all this because the same point I make against leftist, socialist-friendly liars in your groups can be leveled at this one of my groups and for the same reasons.
In this single case however the data is from 2010 so despite the left-lean it’s still available to read)
CATO Institute;
https://www.cato.org/regulation/winter-2010-2011/book-review-more-guns-less-crime-3rd-ed
One of Bill Whittle’s short vids which is well worth the 6 minutes to watch.
Here’s one from the Foundation for Economic Education.
and there are many more.
But it’s not arguable that in any instance where a citizen is endangered in violence that is being thrust upon him or her that only 2 types of defense can be resorted to.
Either you will use violence or you will call someone who can use violence.
Or you can do what the liberals did in the apartment buildings in Arora Colorado. What ever you are told. Including giving up you home, your body, your positions and your life at the whim of criminals made stronger by Leftist originations and those that you cited above.
I have 2 observations.
#1 Only Dem/Comms or stupid, cowardly people, were put out by the gangs as is evident by the fact they were put out without any fight at all.
#2 A chicken paying Colonel Sanders to do what he does and voting for him is called natural selection. Stupid should hurt!
So the fact that not a shot was fired in defense means no one who was put out was armed and/or willing to fight so they actually deserve what they got and worse, because cowards and stupid people cannot be free or safe unless made that way by better men then themselves.
PLEASE NOTE:
All readers of this counterpoint. This is for the benefit of the readership only. logical debate is only valuable when used among those that will allow logic to override emotions.
Interestingly, the use of controlled (legal) opioids in Germany is second only to the US among rich countries (Global, regional, and national consumption of controlled opioids: a cross-sectional study of 214 countries and non-metropolitan territories - PMC). However, the German rate of opioid dependence and overdose mortality is consistent with most of Europe and very low versus the US (Global patterns of opioid use and dependence: Population harms, interventions, and future action - PMC). What’s behind this glaring difference? What is it that the Germans “won’t tolerate”? Here are three possibilities:
A health system - from pharmaceutical companies to health providers to retail drug stores – that profits from selling more drugs to more people?
A lack of access to in-patient addiction treatment and appropriate follow-up support (including housing) upon discharge?
Governments (federal, state and local) stuck in the War on Drugs mindset despite the growing mountain of evidence from across Europe and other developed countries showing that policies focused on public health and harm reduction (rather than on prosecution and punishment) more effectively address the problem?
If interested, this article from the Cato Institute (not exactly a hub of liberal thought!) is worth a look: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/harm-reduction-shifting-war-drugs-war-drug-related-deaths#heroin-assisted-treatment
I do not believe there is good evidence that drug treatment works, sadly.
I too have been skeptical of addiction treatment, both success rate and cost-effectiveness. But these two incongruous facts beg explanation:
(1) Germans use more prescribed opioids per capita than any other rich country, although less than the US when illicit opioids are included.
(2) The rate of opioid dependence and death in Germany is about 1/10th that in the US.
Germany and some other countries (data from the Netherlands are similar) appear to be doing something right, but what?
I have studied disease patterns and biostatistics and I do not have the answer. It has stumped me for almost five years. I observe with fascination. You are probably familiar with the Broken Window Theory. My best hypothesis has something to do with their cultural expectations and social contagion. Also, as you have rightly pointed out, our “health” system is financially incentivized to manage disease. Most institutions are captured at this point. As a capitalist conservative, I have to concede that single-payer (not socialized medicine in the strict sense, NHS, Canada) might reverse these perverse incentives. Tough to imagine with open borders.
My best hope is that we have a parallel system slowly being built outside of these insurance-based providers. Since COVID, many of the best physicians (except academia) no longer accept insurance. Rebuilding the system is like building an ocean raft with everyone floating on it. 
I think the state of America’s health is one of our largest national security threats.
Spending more and more on addiction without any evidence base is a fatal mistake, as is putting half the country on semaglutide for obesity. I wish I could be optimistic. Maybe hitting rock bottom is the final phase before being forced to find population-level solutions. At the individual level, I believe most of us know generally what to do.
I do not agree with what Americans have been sold about “mountain of evidence from across Europe and other developed countries” and it would take a very long post to give my reasons and cite examples I know from living here for five years. We might not even agree on what “liberal” means: left or classic liberal are not the same. Europeans ask me all the time why our parties have flipped. They are having the same issues if you have been following European politics.
