What is one to do when a criminal proceeds, undeterred by a 90-pound German shepherd, a security alarm system and a property lit up like an outdoor stadium? And now he has our house keys and an inventory of the things he'd like to call his own. Would the police patrol my dead-end street as effectively the second time as they had the first? Would my small children be unharmed the next time? Would the criminal be satisfied with another automobile, another television, or would he feel the need to climb the staircase to the bedrooms, perhaps for a watch or a ring or a wallet, again risking little?

Would my children wake to find a masked figure, clad in total black, in their bedroom doorway, a vision that might haunt them for years? Would the police come again and fill out yet another report and at what point should I feel comfortable that the "bad guy" got everything he wanted and wouldn't return a third time?

I went to the safe where my licensed and registered gun was kept, loaded it for the very first time and tucked it under the mattress of my bed. I assured my frightened children "that Daddy would deal with the bad guy ... if he ever returned."

Little did I imagine that this brazen thief was waiting in the back-yard bushes as I tucked my children into bed.

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