Well, sometime in the past three days, someone shot one of the side windows

[MineralMan]

on my 1996 Ford Ranger beater pickup truck. A pellet gun was used. I didn't see it happen, and just noticed that the rear quarter window on my extended cab on the driver's side had been shot at. It is still in place, but is shattered in chunks since it is made of tempered glass. The glass is still in place, though, so I taped over it with 3M heavy duty clear packing tape to prevent it from falling apart.

I could lfix it, of course. A used replacement window, with frame, would cost me about $75 on eBay, and i could do the installation myself in about an hour. I probably won't do it, though, since I don't look out that window at any time. The tape will stabilize it, so I'll probably leave it like that. I mean, it's a 24-year-old truck and i don't really care.

I had parked it out on the street after doing a minor repair that made it much more reliable. I parked it on the street so it would be available to me without moving our other car, a 2020 KIA Soul out of the driveway so I could back the truck out. Now that someone has vandalized the window, it's back in the driveway, and will get used less often. It's my trash truck, yard waste truck, and general utility hauling vehicle.

Why did someone shoot at my car with a pellet gun? I have no idea. Random crap by some youthful driver, I suppose. it has happened to me before. When I lived in California, someone did the same to my 1960 Ford Falcon station wagon, a car I paid only $100 for. In that case, though, the entire window fell out in chunks. I replaced it with a carefully cut piece of 3/16" oak plywood. I was not about to spend more than I paid for the car for a replacement piece of glass. The oak plywood window replacement could even be rolled down into the tailgate, just like the glass one, so it was all good. I kept the Falcon for a couple more years, and that oak window worked just fine for me, despite no longer being transparent, forcing me to use the wagon's side windows.

So, now, my Ranger, for which I paid just $1100, pretty much equivalent to the $100 I paid for the Falcon some 25 years ago, has a broken window, this time repaired with clear plastic tape to prevent it from disintegrating. Two episodes of vandalism to a car. Did I report either to the police? Nope. They couldn't do anything about it, anyhow.

WTF? C'mon folks. Don't shoot at cars with your pellet gun. Think!

[rzemanfl]

1. I hope your pellet gun post(s) had nothing to do with it. n/t

[MineralMan]

2. I don't think that's likely.

Shooting rats shouldn't lead to anyone vandalizing my truck. Besides, I doubt anyone in my neighborhood reads DU.

[rzemanfl]

6. You're probably right, although some RW nut jobs read DU. n/t

[Boxerfan]

3. More likely a BB gun....

Pellets deform as they are soft lead-Usually.I used to build / tune all sorts of pellet guns mostly those for Field target competition.And at the time I worked in a rural wrecking yard.I used the "kill pile" of cars as targets more than a few times.I was surprised that a fairly high power 1200 fps airgun would not break standard auto glass. But a BB would shatter it easily.

[MineralMan]

4. The pellet remains embedded in the window.

I left it there. It was a .177 lead pellet. Tempered glass is weird stuff, really. Fortunately, the fragments did not fall out, so i could stabilize the pane with that 3M tape. Eventually, I suppose I'll buy a replacement window and install it. It's not a difficult job, since the window and its frame are a unit, attached to the interior with four screws. You do have to remove several plastic interior trim panels to replace it, though, which is a PITA, really. I hate removing interior plastic trim on cars, especially old cars. I always seem to break something when I do.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. Just kids playing around w/ their BB gun or pellet gun. They don't think, before they shoot.

I remember running off some kids that were, they thought, doing me a favor by shooting (pellet gun) the pigeons off my roof. I caught them getting ready to shoot and ran them off, told them that the pellet gun wasn't going to do any good anyway, and to not shoot at my house w/ the gun. I should have taken the gun away, and had their parents contact me to pick the gun up. I just let them run off.

[MineralMan]

8. Yes, that's the most likely thing.

I remember a story about someone shooting car windows out on an entire block in St. Paul a year or so ago. Kids or young adults in cars with such BB or pellet guns are always a worry. Unfortunately, they typically do such things late at night, so they are rarely observed in the process.

I did take a BB gun from a kid once who was shooting at things on a neighbor's property. I knew who the kid was and were he lived, so I marched up there and addressed the issue with the boy's father, who took the BB gun and broke it with the kid watching. A suitable lesson, I thought.

I shot a fat sparrow with my first BB gun, the day I got it. I think I was 10 years old. My father caught me, because he was watching me from a window. He retrieved the little bird, dressed it like he would a quail while I watched, and had my mother fry it up for my lunch. I ate it. I never shot any small birds with that BB gun again.

[Bayard]

7. Do you have Biden signs in your yard?

I know we'd be fair game if we did here.

[MineralMan]

9. Not yet. I will, though, once he is officially the nominee.

I put up yard signs for all of the Democratic candidates before the general election.

[abqtommy]

10. I had the same experience in 1979 with my Ford pickup. It was in Spokane, WA and I went ahead

and fixed it. I didn't spend a lot of time agonizing over it and had no further problems that way. Nurture
your soul and leave retribution to Karma/The Fates...

[MineralMan]

11. Yeah. It's not really much of a big deal.

Kids.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

12. In 1990, we were relocating partway across the country.

Went house hunting, found a great house in a good neighborhood, and moved in about a month later. Between the time we bought the place and the time we moved in, someone, probably a specific neighbor kid, shot a bb into one of the bedroom windows on the second floor. Very annoying bit of vandalism.

Since only the one window of your truck was shot, I'm guessing, as have others, that yours was a one-off.

Oh, and the family with the kid with the bb gun moved a few months later.

[shockey80]

13. We were all crazy teenagers once.

My friends and I did some really crazy shit when we were teenagers. Most of the time it was not random. We usually had a reason to go after someone who pissed us off. I am not saying you brought this upon yourself, it sounds random.

I will never forget, as teenagers we built a log cabin in the woods. We did it with an axe and hatchets. It took a long time to build it. We even gave it a peaked roof. It was very hard work.

Some idiot who lived in the neighborhood decided he needed some fire wood for his house. He took a chain saw to our cabin.

On halloween night about 50 of us showed up at his house and we set things right. We wrecked his house and he deserved it.

[hunter]

14. Our house borders a public trail to the local high school.

There's always graffiti on the walls. It's a constant battle to paint it over.

We've had a big rock thrown through our kitchen window, pellets through our bedroom windows, and car windows broken.

If I let that stuff bother me I'd be a lot crazier than I am.

Our police don't come out for anything small. They consider most things small. If you call them they'll tell you to fill out a form on their website, or in person at the police station. The police station is a fascinating place with community service officers behind bullet proof glass and all sorts of people waiting for their names to be called. It's like a dystopian Department of Motor Vehicles. Some people look and smell like they live in the world of Mad Max. Maybe they do.

I always think long and hard before I call the police anyways. I've seen them shoot people I wouldn't have shot. In my experience once the guns come out everything is FUBAR. Guns make bad situations worse.

When we lived in a rougher part of town, around the corner from a liquor store and a 7-Eleven, we saw all sorts of shit.

eBay always seems sort of sketchy to me, I don't think I'd trust them for car parts, especially safety related parts. If I can't get a part locally, or I think the local prices are absurdly high, I use Rockauto. Sometimes they'll tell me they can't ship a part to California because it's not approved for use here, but California approved parts are usually just a few dollars more and I think the California regulations are sound. I don't want to increase the amount of environmental damage my cars cause just to save a few bucks.

[Ohiogal]

15. You have a Biden bumper sticker on that truck, don't you?

I don’t put political signs on my car because the trumpanzees around here would probably vandalize it. It’s only a 14 year old Corolla but it’s the only car I’ve got. Sad that we have to think of things like this.

[MineralMan]

16. I do, yes. A Veterans for Biden sticker.

That could be it, I suppose.