Driving to work early one morning, I saw the local police closing down entrances to my neighborhood, with the SWAT team and other units coming in with lights and sirens. This is far from normal where we live.

My wife was home with the baby; I called and told her to turn on the A/C, shut the windows, arm herself, and stay inside.

Unbelievably, she started arguing with me about how it was a nice day, the A/C was expensive to run, and so on. With forced calm, I repeated that the SWAT team was deployed in our neighborhood, asked once again for her to close up the house and stay inside with her gun, and hung up the phone.

When the police helicopter started orbiting our neighborhood a few minutes later she took me seriously. To her credit she called back and apologized.

Now we have a few predetermined action plans that we don't practice often enough, but at least I'm confident that she won't think I'm nuts if we ever have the SWAT team come back into our neighborhood.

The SWAT callout originated from a domestic dispute. The police had been called to a house around the corner for a couple arguing loudly in the middle of the street. When the cops showed up the couple ran inside, and the man told the responding officers that he would shoot them if they didn't go away. The SWAT team used an armored vehicle to evacuate homes within line of sight of the house, and tried to make contact with the couple, who took their phone off the hook.

Eventually, the man came outside to tell the cops to go away and leave him alone, they shot him with beanbags and took him into custody. The woman came out and fought the arresting officers, and was similarly taken into custody. Alcohol was involved.