This might not be the appropriate place to post this as it doesn't directly have anything to do with CCW, but I'm not sure where else to ask this. Heres my very long story:About a month ago I got a knock on my door. I look through the glass and there's six men probably late 20's early 30's. This isn't totally uncommon where I live, sometimes we get people trying to collect money for one thing or another that just go around knocking on doors. I crack the door open and ask how I can help them today.The one closest to me says "yeah homie, you got my phone." I say excuse me? He takes a step closer and says "quit fuckin playin white boy, hand it over." I say "whats going on?" another one says "we know you got our phone, we tracked it here (he holds up another phone and points to it), your address is xxx xxxx st" I say "that is my address, but I dont have your phone here. I don't really know what to tell you." The second guy that spoke to me says "You got any kids that would steal a phone?" so I say "I dont have any kids and I promise you, your phone is not here. If It's been stolen you need to call the police." Now the first guy that spoke to me steps forward and says "Fuck the police, we handle our business ourselves. You better get the fuck outta my way cause I'm coming in now!"He's screaming in my face at this point so I take a step back and say "we're all going to calm down and play the waiting game until the police get here" while I grab the shotgun from behind the door, bring it up to shoulder level and chamber a shell. They all turn around and run across the lawn and get into their car, but they don't drive off. My wife is sitting on the couch this whole time so I ask her to call 911 and tell them what just happened.My wife call 911, gets transfered, and then tell the dispatcher everything that happened except she does not mention that I had the gun. I'll come back to that later. The police show up after a full hour and the whole time the 6 guys are still crammed in the car sitting right in front of the lawn. I never stepped out of my house, but from what I can see most of them are making calls on their phones. Eventually a police cruiser with two officers and a police SUV with two officers show up. As soon as I see the lights coming around the corner, I close the door, remove the shell from the chamber, put the safety on, put the shotgun back where it was and open the door again. One officer approaches the car while another walks up to me. As this is happening a car I've never seen before with five people in it pulls into my plat (that only hase 5 houses in it), and as soon as it gets to the spot where it can see the police cars, immediately reverses and takes off.I invite the officer inside (It was very cold outside) and as he's closing the door he see's the shotgun. He grabs it immediately, holds it away from me and asks me why I have it there. As I start to explain, he cuts me off and starts giving me a lecture on how It's not ok to have a gun sitting in you're living room when you invite an office inside your house and we were wrong by not telling the dispatcher that I had a gun. I apologize and tell him that my wife made the call and we were both very scared at the time and neglected to inform the dispatcher, but it wouldnt happen again and I wanted to do whatever I could to make him feel comfortable with the situation. He hands it back to me and tells me to put it in another room so I do. After that we both tell him everything that happened including the car that pulled in and left right after they arrived. before walking out the door he repeats the lecture about the gun and then goes to talk to his partner.After a while the officer I spoke to and another officer come back in the house. And says that the 6 people in the car say they are just looking for their stolen phone, and they have some kind of app that says it is here (I already told him they said that) and that he is inclined to believe them, then asks if he and his partner can take a look around. I say yes, and they go out to car and take one of the guys' phone and look around for ten minutes. (I guess you press a button on the app and the missing phone makes some kind of alarm sound so you can find it.) When they dont find the phone they ask me and wife if we have it hidden somewhere. Of course not. They ask us if we're sure we dont know where the phone is. We say we have no idea. The officer says I guess were done here then.I ask whats going to happen about the 6 men who showed up at my doorstep being aggressive and threatening to break in? And what about the other car that pulled in and took off? What if they called someone they knew with a gun as backup? The officer says that he talked to those "boys" (I'm only 26, they were all older than me) and he believes that they did nothing wrong. they were just worried about their phone and had every reason to believe that I had stolen it. They seemed like outstanding young men and only one of them had priors so he wasn't going to do anything to them and the other car was probably completely unrelated. He said the biggest threat that he saw was me with the gun. Then he and his partner gave me the gun lecture a third time and added that I escalated the situating way higher than it need to go and that if I cant handle myself without pulling a gun on everyone who shows up to my doorstep then I'm not responsible enough to own one. I was getting a little angry at this point so I told them that I'm well within my right to hold a gun inside my own home and to point it at a mob of angry men that show up at my doorstep and threaten to break in. They deflect my comment and ask what I would like to happen. I say that I would like something to happen because they aren't doing anything. By now my wife is trying to get me to stop engaging with them, and the officer says the only thing he can do is trespass them from the property. I ask what happens if they come back tonight, or next week, or next month. He says if you have an emergency you need to call 911 and let us handle it. I say great. They talk to the guys, who drive off and a couple minutes latter the officers drive off.Heres my problem: I was pissed about the way this was handled, but when I tell the story to others, I get such mixed responses that I'm not sure what to think. For example my wife, who seemed on my side the whole time, later said that she thought I took it too far and should not have involved a gun, and shouldn't have gotten short with the officers towards the end. On the other hand when I told my dad about it he said if he had been in that situation he would have started firing as soon as they threatened to force their way in. Every time I tell this story to someone they either would have been more extreme of they think that I took it way too far. It's about a 50/50 split. In my mind I did everything right (except not telling the dispatcher that I had a gun) and the six guys did everything wrong, but I feel like the officers saw it as the other way around. I feel like they were making it out to be as if the guys in the car were the victims in this situation. I guess what I'm looking for is how someone else would have handled this same situation. Am I crazy? or did I do the right thing? via /r/CCW http://ift.tt/2kXr7yY
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