Paranoid? I think not.

A few weeks ago we were called paranoid for owning body armor.  The person could not envision any possible reason for a person to need such things in their home.

Then this happened:

Today I was hanging around the apartment while Chris was at work.  I was lounging on the couch, playing around on my guitar whe all of a sudden I heard several loud noises.  I froze for a few seconds while my brain said "Hey, I'm pretty dang sure that was gunfire.  Right here."

The guitar went down and I grabbed my gun and my phone and went into the bedroom and strapped on my body armor.  From the bedroom, I could hear a male and female voice, both sounding quite angry.  I couldn't make out much either than cursing and the occasional "get out of here" or "I want you gone" or something along those lines.  I couldn't see anything out any of the windows, and could only really hear from the bedroom (which, given the layout of the apartments, leads me to believe that this incident was in one of the rooms directly below my bedroom).

No one appeared to be injured, nor were there any other gunshots.  In short order the shouting was done, several cars left the parking lot, so I relaxed a bit and took the body armor off.  It took about half an hour for the police to come knocking.  I told them I did hear what sounded like gunshots, and shouting, but I couldn't see anything.  Interestingly enough, the officer only spoke with me and one other apartment on this floor, bypassing the other two.  He also didn't appear to talk to anyone on the other floors (apart from ground floor - I can't hear if someone walks up to a ground floor apartment).

I have no idea what actually happened tonight.  If I was to make a guess though, it would be that someone in one of the apartments beneath me discharged a firearm in some direction that was (thankfully) not up.  Given the lack of ambulances, I'm guessing that no one was injured.

Seeing as the police response is not very fast and I may be living on top of someone whose mastery of firearms safety is somewhat lacking, I think having body armor is a fantastic idea.