Campground Harassment: Gun Laws, Safety & Security for RV Lifestyle

what do you do when you're afraid for your life and you can't call 911 welcome back to the RV Odd Couple my name is John and I'm Mercedes long story short we sold most of our possessions in pursuit of freedom independence and adventure because life's too short guys and in today's video we're gonna bring up a serious topic we actually debated whether or not to share it we promised to share with you guys all of our experiences as we are vide the good the bad and the ugly unfortunately this is kind of an ugly experience that happened to us a few days ago but we think it's an incredibly important subject and we're gonna go over it today we were in a dangerous situation and we could not call 9-1-1 as uncomfortable as this is to share we feel it's really important so that you two have a plan because we thought we had an adequate safety plan for things like fire and bad weather and an intruder but what this experience brought to light was that the plan can always be improved I remember all through school that we'd have fire drills or in Colorado you have tornado drills I'm sure some of you even remember when there was nuclear drills yeah I was a little kid actually sometimes in adulthood we don't continue to practice those safety plans and unfortunately the one that we had to put into effect a couple nights ago has to do with an intruder and we want to let you know that it was minor property damage and harassment we're not intending to scare you but these things are really important whether you're are Veen or whether you're in a sticks and bricks what things are you doing to keep your family safe and we also want to invite ex law enforcement we love to hear what you have to say because you guys are better equipped give us any tips that you might have and a special shout out to Darrel and skip and Kevin and Mike we got a lot of retired law enforcement in the RV odd squad so Mercedes and I headed off to bed at about 11:30 a few nights ago and soon after we laid down a truck comes by and stops just outside of our bedroom on the RV which is right next to the road it sits there and it idles for about 30 seconds it was longer it felt more like a minute he was there for a little while just stopped and we could hear his truck idling you might think the truck is not a big deal but remember we recently released our location and we had a video go viral where we mentioned God where we've got an onslaught of negativity and we had we had to block a lot of people and remove comments so it kind of freaked us out a little bit but not too bad and he moved on we thought nothing of it Mercedes fell asleep and I was just about to fall asleep when we heard something hit the roof it was like a boom boom and again it freaked us out a little bit so I got very quiet I listen hyper alert and after about five or ten minutes I assumed that it was a branch that had broken loose from the tree above our RV or maybe a big pine cone right so again I'm thinking man you're just freaking yourself out relax go to sleep so now it's after midnight Mercedes is in a deep sleep and I'm just about sleeping when somebody hits right over the top of our bedroom the roof three times boom boom boom and just freed us both out we both immediately sat up in the dog when crazy Skippy went nuts we got very very quiet I leaned over to Mercedes and said someone's on the roof of the RV and they better not have stepped on my bird's nest going up that back ladder never mind that someone's on the roof of RV obviously you have ill motives if you're on the roof not on the knocking on the door but don't mess with my birds money it just went to my mind the only way to get up in the RV that quietly would be to go up the ladder in the ladder that on the back of our RV is where our bird's nest is so I reach over to grab my phone to call 9-1-1 I hit 9-1-1 and it's dead nothing I cannot call 911 in this park now for all seven eight weeks and we haven't had phone service it's been dead so at this point we know that we're number one we're terrified that somebody's in the roof and number two we're in this alone we've got to protect ourselves now luckily Mercedes and I have a plan to protect ourselves in the event that someone was outside harassing or trying to you to our RV we do carry weapons we carried them legally I'm licensed to conceal in my state and Mercedes has been trained with weapons even though she did not ever want to get trained yeah I you know how we're on opposite ends of the political spectrum I don't like guns but I'm glad that I know how to use them and especially having a kid for safety purposes we both have the training that's necessary to protect our RV so we kicked our plan into place we're gonna talk a little bit about guns and because we've gotten some questions from some RV odd squad members we just got this question yesterday so Sandi f wrote in the comments you touch on one of my biggest concerns I don't go anywhere without my weapon I have a concealed permit for it once I begin traveling will there be an issue going state to state then the answer is yes every state has its own laws as it pertains to guns and weapons now I'm legally licensed to conceal a weapon from my home state of Florida Florida has reciprocity with a whole lot of other states in the country I believe 38 other states but what's interesting about this is it kind of stinks because and this is not political but if you're in a red state you pretty much know you're okay to defend yourselves and have arms or weapons in your RV if you're in a blue state it's not that simple it's not that easy to understand so it's your responsibility to find out the laws in the state in which you are RVing for instance we're now in California now Mercedes has mentioned a few Lauren Faust forcement officers that we bumped into and they've really helped us to understand how California weapons laws were the nuances yeah but I really did a lot of research and it's really interesting in California an RV is not considered your home it's considered just like a vehicle like a car truck it's considered the same way and when you are transporting weapons in your car truck or RV your weapon cannot be loaded so nothing in the chamber in the clip not be in it they also consider both your clip your ammunition and your gun the weapon as two weapons each of those has to be locked in its own container they cannot be locked in the same container and they don't recognize your glovebox lock glovebox as one of those approved containers but we also found out in the state of California that when you camp when your RV is on a campsite that you're paying for you are considered a temporary resident of California then you're allowed to have weapons loaded weapons in your RV as your home that you otherwise could not have if you were transporting or going from site to site so just study the laws look at them you're responsible to do your own research but don't just assume that because of the political leaning of the state that you're Feiner you're not fine because even specific counties have different laws think about New York City versus upstate New York that's just one example and also you you when you're looking at the law you want to look at a couple of things if you're in our beer you want to check if your RV is treated as a vehicle or if your RV is treated as your home because that's gonna change things you also want to find out the state's requirement for safe transport of the weapon now not only is it your right to protect your family in possession possessions in this country I believe it's it's my responsibility to be able to protect my family if I can't call 9-1-1 or the professionals to help me and one of the things that I think is really important whether you choose your weapon to be a gun or nunchucks it doesn't matter you need to know how to safely use it because if you don't know how to safely use your weapon of choice in this kind of life-or-death situation you're actually putting yourself in more danger the other thing that's really important is not just practicing your safety plan but having that familiarity with using the weapon the two of those combined will make you more calm in this stressful situation if you haven't already I highly suggest you take a gun safety course or a weapon safety course and get properly licensed in the state in which you live and we're actually going to link to a resource that will help you find out about individual states but again this is not all-inclusive you still have more research to do as soon as we try to call 9-1-1 and that failed we knew we were on our own we immediately kicked in our plan our personal family's plan protect each other from someone that's outside the RV and might try to get in so we immediately went for our weapons I have two weapons and Mercedes has a weapon so when I got my weapons the first thing I did was I cocked them extremely loud and on purpose so that the person that is outside knows I have a website weapons I also learned that it is a really good idea to say as loud as you possibly can we called the police and I have weapons I think the reasoning behind this is by saying I'm armed and the police are on their way that then if you do have to use the weapon you've already given them full opportunity to know to get out you know and they chose not to knowing that you were armed I was going to go down the stairs which is what I did very quickly and quietly not turn out any lights I went to the window that is closest to the door I cracked that window a little bit in the shade and I've started watching the stairs because if they start coming at that door I'll have a shot at them before they get a shot at coming in the door so my role in the plan is that I stay with our daughter and I know where the emergency exits are so I can exit the RV if it if someone comes in and it's more safe to be outside of the RV than inside of the RV so some people would tell you that we should stay together that's not our plan my job is to go down and to watch the window where they might be trying to get into the door but one thing that we learned that we could do better on that is barricading one thing that they talked about in the research that we did after this situation was the importance of barricading yourself so that you're making it as difficult as possible for the intruder to get in and to get you which is a great tip right so when I left the bedroom and went down to take my position to watch the door Mercedes could have barricaded that door okay now she has escaped it's already pre-planned on how to get out of there now if the guy ever does come through the door okay I know to let her know he's inside I'm gonna fight with him she's gonna go out the emergency exit and get as far away from here is she can while I fight with the guy that's gotten into the RV one of the things that criminals and intruders do not like is they don't like loud noises okay so any loud noise is gonna scare away 99% of people that are trying to get into your home one of the other things that I learned is that I have a fob to my truck so I could have actually started my truck by starting my truck him being on the outside of whoever was being on the outside it disorientate s-- them by sound so they can't hear what's going on in the RV they don't know where I am or where I'm positioned the other option I have is to hit my emergency alarm on my father in the truck which basically is really loud and it's gonna grab attention this way and obviously an intruder doesn't want attention we also read about a foghorn but we don't need any extra stuff in the RV so you might want to just use your car alarm yeah but it's a great idea right if you don't have a car alarm or you don't have a fog to start your truck you get get a fog airhorn alot of people use those on boats those are very very loud so you may want to get one of those but one of the cool things about that I did not know by starting the truck my truck immediately lights everything up around and it was pointing towards the road which you know could light that up I just never used that option so but I thought it was really interesting to find out yeah and we're sharing it with you so you can add that to your plate exactly add that to your plan it's a great option so I know you're probably saying okay so what happened you mentioned that there was damage done to your property and you mentioned it was harassment so here's how the story continues to unfold so I sat down stairs in my position watching the door for about 30 minutes didn't move was very quiet didn't turn any any lights on left all the shades down except for the one shade that I popped open in the window so I could hear and see near the door if the person came for the it was very quiet didn't see any movement at which point I grabbed the dog the dog and I went out together very quietly and then I let the dog go down first the dogs are fantastic at sniffing out anything any movement around the RV under the RV and that brings to light the importance of having a dog now we've always known that our dog was part of our security system so to say yeah he said he's a good boy good boy but especially because he has a great view of under the RV it just John actually said he's like man I'm so grateful for our dog you know obviously I thought the person may have been on the roof so for me to run out the door would have just been dumb because he's got the upper hand if he is above me unfortunately I did not sleep the rest of the night know what's really funny is Mercedes trusted me enough that she just went to sleep after about a half hour I knew that having both of us not having any sleep that it'd be better than at least one of us get some sleep that night and I knew he was fine if the situation escalated further he makes sure I knew what was going on and as soon as white did come out I was able to get up on the roof and we found two rocks which is right here so somebody basically is ridiculous I'm compared to the size in my hand so somebody just tossed these up and took off which was pretty terrifying and there is no holes in the roof you can see with the rocks landed on the rubber roof but it was just ridiculous I don't know what would make someone think that that's permissible in any situation that is extremely threatening and extremely stupid we hope that this video really cemented the importance of a proper safety plan for different scenarios and we invite you to watch the next video where we talk about campground etiquette because throwing rocks at our v's is not good campground we didn't even think we had a mention that yeah it shouldn't even be on the list right we'll see in the next video

Channel: RV Odd Couple

Views: 244,837

Rating: 4.7710419 out of 5

Keywords: rv life, full time rving, rv living, full time rv living, full time rv, full time rv life, rv safety, rv security, rv full time, rv living full time, firearm laws, gun laws, RV Odd Couple, rv horror stories, 911 rv park, rv gun storage, rv gun safe, rv gun carry laws, rv gun laws, rv harassment, RV, Full, Time, Rving, rver, rvers, Odd, Couple, rv travel, rv protection, rv camping, rv lifestyle, rv life full time, rv full time family, rv travel vlog, full time rvers, Camping

Id: kRuhASth-Yk

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2019