Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I love the picture of a Queens resident getting his Daryl Dixon on.

When night falls in the Rockaways, the hoods come out.

Ever since Sandy strafed the Queens peninsula and tore up the boardwalk, it’s become an often lawless place where cops are even scarcer than electrical power and food. Locals say they are arming themselves with guns, baseball bats, booby traps — even a bow and arrow — to defend against looters.

Thugs have been masquerading as Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) workers, knocking on doors in the dead of night. But locals say the real workers have been nowhere in sight, causing at least one elected official — who fears a descent into anarchy if help doesn’t arrive soon — to call for the city to investigate the utility.

Kudos for at least having the bow. Minus fifty points for the staged picture that all but says “come arrest me for showing off in public”.

I dont know what its like now, but when I turned 18 in Brooklyn the first thing I got was my ‘rifle/shotgun license’. Right after that I think I immediately went to Carnival Sporting Goods on McDonald Ave and bought a Mossberg 500 pistol grip shotgun. Or maybe it was a Chinese AK. It’s been so long I can’t recall. My point being that unless things have changed a lot since then, getting a ‘real’ defense gun isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Handguns (legally) were a bit tougher, and I never did get my NY pistol license. But there was a time I had a few shotguns, AKs, and even a lovely HK93A3 tucked away in my bedroom.

Nowadays, of course, it’s a different story. And the funny thing is, while we are tremendously well-armed for this sort of thing we live in an area where this sort of behavior doesn’t happen on a scale like that….probably exactly because most folks here are so well armed.In the post-Sandy environ I suspect a stuby little pump gun with a tactical light and an assortment of shells would be just the ticket.