Ditto here. I replaced all the bracket screws a few years ago with 3-1/2 inch ones. Also, after a rash of residential burglaries in which the gained entry through the rear door to the garage, I barred the door with a 2/4. I'd rather keep them out of the house. I don't want to have to confront an intruder.
There is no outside walk-in door to our garage, just a keypad code entry system for the overhead door. When we bought the place, I was inspecting things and noticed that someone had tried to slip the front doorknob latch with an ice pick while the house was unoccupied. There are puncture marks in the rubber seal, but they never got in. Of course, if my wife saw a show on TV about burglars and rapists coming down the chimney, I'd have to brick it up and install an electric heating system. :icon_rolleyes: She feels totally vulnerable because she might not be able to get to the .38 cal Colt revolver in her night stand, the .40 cal PT100 in my night stand, the AR15 under the bed with 20 rounds in it, or the assorted (and loaded) .22 semi auto, .22 mag, .32 Walther, 380 PT58, or the 9mm PT709 in the dresser.
We don't leave anything unlocked around here because it's a relatively high poverty/crime area and apparently a lot of lazy low-lifes find a girlfriend to support them when they get out of prison. A town of 9,000 with an average of 1 or 2 murders per year, including two cops within 9 months of each other.
What are the odds of THIS happening: cops get a call about a guy beating his wife/girlfriend up at a certain address, she's on the phone screaming for help and the phone goes dead...cops go out, wife/girlfriend meets them at the door and says everything is OK...cops tell her they have to come in and check to be sure because they've had trouble there before ("known" drug dealer)...cops walk in and her boyfriend kills one and wounds two others...because of a mix up in the dispatch center, they had the right street address but the wrong town. The actual call was for domestic violence in a town 20 miles away.
(Where I lived in Iowa, the closest town was half this size and had
maybe one murder every 15 or 20 years in the entire county.) And if you ever looked at the map of sexual predators in this area, you'd
never let your wife or daughter go to the Lake of the Ozarks/Truman Reservoir or
any of the resort lakes in Missouri without you, and
you would go heavily armed.