You wake up at 3 AM and hear heavy footsteps and activity downstairs. (Let’s assume you don’t have a dog.) You grab your shotgun or pistol (if you have one) and very quietly open the door and walk down the hall to your room. You are standing in total darkness, however, you can see a burglar in the living room, illuminated by moonlight through the window. He is looking through your cabinets with a flashlight. He cannot see you.
Do you…
Hide in the shadows and wait, hoping that he will leave?
Turn on the light, with your gun pointed at him, and yell at him to get the fuck out?
If you don’t have a gun, what do you do?
If there is more than one burglar, what do you do?
Probably not. I don’t want him to leave knowing what other goodies he can come back for.
Possibly.
Even with a gun, step 1 is to make sure the cops are on their way. I’ve called 911 about three times since we’ve lived here; each time, the cops managed to arrive before the paramedics, and in about 30-60 seconds. This is one reason I’m happy to live in a busy area.
Take down the larger one first.
Male, no kids of my own, but we do have a baby living in the house.
Male with wife. When I got burgled I had no hesitation (after hearing the burglar in the room next to me) going after them. They fled before I got there (which was probably just as well for me. But it is reactive- as when I chased the purse snatcher at the bus stop- I was giving him 20 years and a few stone- I just went for him. When he ran around the corner I found there was a carful of them- they shot through. Again very lucky for me.
Actually, I left it out because I wanted to see if it would be anyone’s first reaction without it being offered as one of the options.
It is legal in many states to shoot an intruder and kill him, but you might still be in for a world of trouble if his relatives decide to sue you for wrongful death and the jury sides with them.
My family (parents and brother) are very pro-gun and my brother actually has a license to conceal/carry.
Even though they live in Houston I have always thought they were paranoid and somewhat freaky for being so attached to their weapons…I have lived in San Antonio for 8 years and to me, in a way, I’m succumbing to their paranoia if I buy a firearm. My brother has offered to buy me a shotgun–the “best” home defense weapon because even if it doesn’t kill you it will cripple you, apparently–and I’ve never encouraged him, because I just don’t believe in living your life with that kind of paranoid philosophy. I think it would do more damage to me–in my head–than it would ever do to anyone who might hypothetically break into my apartment.
Having said that…re: the OP…I would grab my cell phone (always beside my bed) call 911, and whisper what’s going on while hiding in the closet. And probably shitting my pants. They can take whatever they want; I’m not going to confront them.
I am female. I have no children. I do live with my boyfriend. I would encourage him not to play the hero.
If my brother did buy me a gun and I actually kept it nearby–which is a longshot, no pun intended–I still wouldn’t confront whoever is downstairs. I would keep it cocked and ready if they opened my closet door and confronted me.
Most burglars just want to get what’s valuable and leave…and they can’t leave with anything that is truly valuable to me.
And IIRC in most US states, you’d actually have to have a legitimate reason to believe that your life was in immediate danger - if you happened to shoot this burglar in the back, in that case you’d be in a world of hurt. Ditto if it turns out he was unarmed and frail, etc. In other words, you yell, “Get out, I’ve got a gun and I’ve called 911” and the robber attacks you or pulls a weapon.
You could think of it as paranoia or think of it as preparedness. “It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it” is the motto that I live by.
You may have a point. But for me to feel comfortable having a gun in my home I would have to take it to the range and feel so comfortable with it that its presence wouldn’t bother me; I would have to feel that I am as familiar with it as I am with my camera or my blender.
I would have to recognize it as a tool, just like a stapler or a band-saw or a margarita machine.
I am just not interested enough, at this point, to put that much time into it. And I think that if you own a gun, you should be that comfortable with it; it should be as familiar to you as an oven mitt. Otherwise you’re endangering yourself and others.
Remain upstairs. He can have anything he can carry if he can get out before police arrive. If he comes upstairs, where me, my wife, and my son are, then I am prepared to shoot him.
True as far as it goes, but he may not believe you when you say that all you want to do is help him load your silver and HDTV into his back seat. He may react violently, in fact.
I would be armed with any one of the dozen edged weapons I have around the house, I hope I would have the calm, reasonable presense of mind to beat the poor man into an unconcious bloody pulp before my adreneline rush wore off.
Sames as above.
Male, no kids.
But if I had a kid it might be a good back-up plan to actually throw the child at the burglar. The screaming and flailing about by the child would startle, confuse and distract the criminal, also, due to the kicking and fuss (and urine produced from the fear factor, I might add to that I warrent) the odds of junior getting hurt would be pretty slim, what with me beating the poor bastard criminal into an unconcious bloody pulp.
Hmm, there’s no downstairs here and no gun. But I’d grab the axe and head out of the bedroom. I’d swing for his head with no warning, and as quietly as I could, hoping to incapacitate/kill him with the first blow. More than one? If there’s just two, I might still try to get them both; otherwise, I’m out the bedroom window, over to the neighbor’s house, where I call the sheriff. The neighbor uses this opportunity to repeat his stance that I should have multiple weapons in the house, in case of situations like this, or zombie invasion. I’m male; no kids.
Let me first say that the chances of my hearing anything from downstairs are remote. I don’t even hear the kids when they call for us during the night. A more plausible scenario has my wife hearing something, and trying to wake me up. In any case, the response would go like this: 1) Fumble for glasses; 2) Charge. In truth, my wife probably wouldn’t wait for me – she’d head down herself. In our house, the kids and phones are downstairs, so calling the police, and waiting it out upstairs, are equally out of the question.
Even unarmed, I’m not particularly concerned about going mano-a-mano with the burglars. Around here, most burglaries are committed by kids addicted to oxycontin, who would flee at the first sign of detection.
