Good for the kid for defending himself and his sister. There’s no way he could have known whether they just intended to rob the house or to harm him and his sister. I hope he doesn’t have any lingering trauma from this.
That’s horrifying.
Yes, yes, this.
If you’ve ever been: raped, had your home broken into, assaulted or vehicle stolen you’ll realise that each of these attacks are incredibly invasive and violent, in varying degrees.
If you’ve never experienced something as “non-violent” as a burglary or vehicle theft, you may not understand how much of a personal violation this feels like. Add to that personal violation and quite reasonable fear that the invasion could include sexual assault or murder and “stopping the attack” as a first priority makes absolute sense.
It applies in your home in all but a handful of states, and outside your house in about 15 states. It’s really more common than most people think.
I’d have rather the house got burglarized and the kid did what he ought to have done and run and hid - if it was because of an overall ban on the type of weapons used to shoot up schools.
I’d rather chance one family (even my own) being put through a traumatic and costly experience than chancing dozens of families being put through burying their loved ones/children.
To decrease the likelihood that you’ll be the victim of a “violent and invasive home burglary” you should perhaps take preventive measures and prepare your entire family with an effective escape plan.
Hypotheticals can be a bitch. Which one are we all gonna cum all over next?
Considering that they are more likely to end up shooting you or each other than a burglar, yes. If the kid had shot his father or sister by mistake thinking they were a burglar, we’d be listening to the pro-gun people talk about how that didn’t show that guns are dangerous to have.
Well, good.
I find the notion that I have a “duty to retreat” from people who invade my home a very scary and weird concept.
It’s MY HOME, bitches. That I pay for.
But, he didn’t.
Did you miss that part?
I am pro-gun (even though I consider myself quite liberal).
Still, I think the mentality that pro-gun Americans have toward guns is way over the top.
I really don’t think a rifle is going to protect you against the US military from attacking your town, city, county or state. Still, that is one of the “arguments” presented by pro-gun, NRA fanatics.
Also, that “pry it from my cold dead hands” mentality does not promote healthy respect for firearms.
I’d say the 2 countries (beside the USA) with the best-armed citizenry are probably Switzerland and Israel. Yes, they are heavily armed, yet I don’t hear about a disgruntled employee shooting up his workplace in Zurich nor a brutal massacre in a Tel Aviv elementary school.
In October in Freedom Pennsylvania, an uncle shot his niece disguised as a skunk because he thought he was shooting a real skunk. HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost
Don’t you think this incredibly negligent attitude toward firearms needs some serious changing?
How does leaving the house after the burglars have broken in accomplish this?
There’s an old adage about horses and barn doors and such.
In any case, it sounds like the dad did discuss this with his kids, and he did give them an effective escape plan: Get the rifle. Shoot the bad guys. Call 911 (not sure when this actually occurred in the plan). Leave via front door once the cops have arrived.
And, it worked!
But he was more likely to; an important fact when the whole point of the thread is an attempt to argue that guns are good and anti-gun people just want 15 year olds to be helpless and killed.
As opposed to the much more reasonable argument that guns are bad and pro-gun people just want 6 year olds to be helplessly killed?
The gun owners who have made it clear that they simply don’t care how many people die for their guns? Who insist on having guns even when the statistics show that they are endangering their families? That’s not unfair at all.
Argument discarded for straw man fallacy.
Those particular gun owners, sure. But that is not the consensus of every gun owner. Probably not the view of the majority of gun owners either.
Why the fuck should the kid have to run from any-damn-body in his own home? That’s just batshit insane.
The door on the front of my house is there to protect you from me. Enter without permission and you just might get carried out.
Apartments don’t typically have rear doors.
Some houses only exit to the back yard, go through a gate(which would be locked, where’s the key? In the house.) where you might run into partners of the burglar.
If you’re upstairs or in the back of the house and you can’t get past the intruder, what now? Or children in other rooms who you have to wake up and herd out in seconds.
(Emphasis mine.) This is a logical fallacy. You can’t instantiate from universal statistics to a particular individual. A statistical claim like “firearms in the home are more often used to shoot family members than intruders” may well be true, but it doesn’t then follow that “this particular boy was more likely to shoot his sister.”
Because he’s a kid. And shouldn’t be tasked with defending his home with lethal force.
As GuanoLad has said, that sounds irresponsible. The NRA has always assured me that “non-outlaw” gun owners are nothing but responsible and always have their guns secured when minors are in the home. Wisconsin has an odd definition of assault. Where I live it’s called attempted burglary up until the point where they actually remove something from my home. I would have to actually be assaulted in order to charge someone for assault. I guess wounding is considered murder is Wisconsin.
If the police had been called and the burglars were confronting the occupants with weapons, then hell yeah, shoot 'em. But it was the middle of the afternoon. All they had to do was walk outside and scream for help at the top of their lungs. And call 911. They were in no mortal danger.
ETA, do you really think that someone can’t get a gun from a safe and load it faster then a cop can show up at their house? I’m not a ‘gun guy’, but I know I can put the magazine in my Glock (which I’ve used at a range about twice) in a few seconds. It doesn’t really take that long. I’m pretty sure I can do it faster then it would take for one of the cops that lives three doors down from me to get to my house. Even if we don’t count the time it would take for me to fumble around with my phone and call 911…which calls the County sheriffs, which then have to transfer me to my city so I can tell the story again.
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Do you really think that you can get a gun from a safe and load it faster than you can walk to the front door and open it? They were dressed, and I will assume on the 1srt floor, since that’s where the burglars were.
I’m confident that a policeman three doors down can come to my aid in the time it takes for someone to break in, realize the house is occupied, and decide to hurt me. Tell yours to lay off the doughnuts.
Is your phone that complicated that you have to “fumble” to dial three digits? Your user interface is too complicated. Get a new phone, it’s cheaper than a new gun.
You don’t have tell anybody your story. Dial 911, say burglary in progress, and leave the line open. Then confront the robbers, leave the house or whatever is more urgent. The police will be on their way. The audio from your phone will fill in some detail until you have a moment to speak.
I’m happy that these children were able to protect themselves and their house. They used more force than necessary. Using more force than necessary is very convenient when someone has a gun. It was stupid.
So is knocking off three houses at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Again, the point being missed, I’d be fine with this (or any) family going through a traumatic and costly experience if it were due to the lack of readily available weapons of the type recently used to shoot up schools.
Also, the “prepare the family ahead of time” could include other various preventive measures that do NOT include firearms. Like not having children home alone. Or having safe rooms. Or a loud-as-fuck alarm system of the type used to disable muggers. Or a big dog. Or any other thing besides a weapon which when obtained by a nutjob will end up killing or maiming lots of people. People are just stuck on guns being the only option because it’s the only one they’ve ever used.
Capiche?
One thing people don’t understand - criminals don’t shoot up places with the goal being “Kill everybody and probably myself later”. Crazy people do that. Crazy people having easy access to weapons is just silly. But that’s the 'Merkin way.