I should note that I lived in a bad neighborhood in North Minneapolis for 11 years and in that time, I displayed a firearm five times to prevent someone from breaking into my house while I was there.
Never pointed it at them, never fired it. Merely showed them that I had it.
I displayed a gun on a sixth occasion at a remote wayside rest in Idaho in order to stop two guys who clearly intended to mug me. Again, never fired it, never even pointed it at them. Just let them know that I was armed.
And in 14 months working Armored, I drew my weapon three times (all in a 6 week period, which is why I chose to leave) to prevent robbery of myself or my partner. Again, never fired, never pointed it at them. Just drew it and had it in my hand.
Nine total times I’ve had a gun in my hand in self-defense. Never fired it, never pointed it at anyone. Situation ended just by virtue of displaying the weapon.
My sister chased off a burglar in her house simply by standing at the top of the stairs and racking a shotgun that she didn’t even have ammo for. The sound of a shotgun being racked is usually enough for people to shit themselves and run.
It really depends on what you are personally capable of doing. Can you really engage in a brutal assault on another human being? If you have any kind of doubt then by all means you should hide away and call for help.
You should only own a gun if you are completely comfortable with it. Most likely you grew up around guns and they’re second nature. The previous posters who hemmed and hawed should absolutely stay away from firearms.
I don’t currently own a real gun but do have several movie guns. They only shoot blanks.
If I come to know there is an intruder, possibly intruders, in the house then I lay low in the shadows and start firing. After a couple of shots, if he hasn’t skedaddled, I yell for him to drop and wait to see if any accomplices show up.
If he’s got no buddies, as I said in a similar thread a couple of years ago, then, well, nobody knows he’s here. This meeting won’t show up on his calendar at home.
He can just “disappear” and nobody’s gonna sue anybody.
Well castles used to have man-traps, killing zones and boiling oil. But we don’t do that now.
And **of course ** there is no country that puts the rights of criminals above those of citizens.
What we have instead is that a burglar has **no right ** to be in your house and can be arrested and sent to prison.
**You don’t have the right ** to kill him unless it is self-defence.
Is it true that in some US states you can kill a burglar fleeing with your goods? If so, is that civilised?
Just a bit O/T, I understood (from a newspaper report in Scotland) that house break ins were becoming less common due to greater security and the cheap cost of electrical goods - hence very low resale value. So low class burglars/ thugs/ thieves are more likely to try and steal things like mobile phones off a person the accost in the street.
In any case I have decided never to break into the residence of KneadtoKnow.
This sounds like a very bad idea to me. If you pull out your movie gun loaded with blanks, the felon just might pull out his real gun loaded with real bullets. And if he does that, your blanks aren’t going to help you unless your movie gun is from the set of The Crow. If you’re going to pull out a firearm, I think it had better be real, because once you’ve done that, you’ve just taken it to a whole other level.
Is burglary civilized? They choose their own life style. The rest of us choose to live and let live. We don’t deserve to be victimized. You really don’t know what that burglar is capable of. You should not gamble with your life or your family’s lives. The threat must be removed.
Argent, you would have a point but you’ve really got to consider what the first thing this guy is going to do is. PANIC!! He already thinks he’s probably shot. He just wants to get away. Or surrender to my mercy. It’s not about the quickdraw in a Roy Rogers serial.
Working University Security, we had a bunch of high school kids who would come around and skateboard all over campus, jumping down stairs, off walls and so forth. We’d regularly kick them off campus and they’d get rather mouthy with us because they knew we couldn’t do anything other than tell them to leave.
So one day I told them that if they got hurt, I would NOT be calling the ambulance. That I would simply load their crippled bodies in the back of my security golf cart, drive a few blocks off campus to the rail yard, all carefully OFF-CAMERA (because I know where they are), dump them in the bushes and drive away.
“I’ll call the police!”
Sure, go ahead. There will be no evidence to prove that you were ever on campus and I’ll deny having seen you.
They stopped coming around…for a while. When they did come back, they ran the minute they saw me.
(Would I really have done that? No. But it got them thinking.)
Likewise about ten years ago when a 12 year old neighbor punk and child of drug dealers started stealing, breaking in to garages and vandalizing the neighborhood. Told him that if he fucked with my house, I’d take his sorry ass out behind my garage, beat him within an inch of his life, then dump his unconscious and bloody body a couple of blocks away. And that I would do this Every. Single. Time. he fucked with my property.
He decided to leave me alone. My neighbor was not so lucky.
(Would I have done that? Yes. That “child” was a monster who relied on the fact that he was a child to do things that would have gotten him shot as an adult.)
I would first nudge my husband awake, which is quite like poking a grouchy grizzly bear with a sharp stick. He wakes up snarling and swinging, and he’s not a very small man. (Once, 5 guys attempted to mug him, and at least one of them had a gun. He yanked a box cutter out of his pocket and stabbed one guy in the neck, and the rest took off running. The guy he stabbed ended up ok, but he held him down until the police arrived. Attempted murder charges were dropped. Not a guy to mess with.)
Then I would call 911, which in the past has gotten me about 7 cops here within 2 minutes.
We do not have any guns, nor will we ever. We do have kids sleeping on all three levels of the house, and we’re rather protective of them.
Given your location, this has to be sarcasm. Given some of the stories I’ve seen about people being arrested for self-defense, especially self-defense inside their own home, I pretty much figured that the English were trying to out French the French by completely surrendering to the criminal class.
My husband owns a rifle-barreled shotgun for hunting only. No ammo on premises since it’s not intended for home defense. Also, if I handled a gun it’d be as good as handing the gun over to the intruder - so I wouldn’t do that.
Well, we have swords and knives all over the house so we’re not at a loss for weapons (and both of us are trained in those), and the house is so small that we’d pretty much automatically be in striking range. I suspect we’d start yelling and that’d probably panic the burglar into running, and nearly inevitably he’d break his neck tripping over something in our maze of furniture.
Anyway, after it was all over I would hopefully be laughing my freaking ass off at the burglar for breaking into a house that looks like it’s the latest teardown in a very well-to-do neighborhood. You’d have to be crazy to think we had anything worthwhile.
Don’t be too harsh. I don’t think some who live in other country’s understand what its like to grow up with guns available. Your perspective sounds very well metered and reasonable to me. All that you have said I agree with except I have a wife and her safety is of the utmost importance to me. Once someone clears the threshold of a door or window, lets just say I pray they only came to rob me. Any indication of violence would be the point at which theirs lives would have to be sacrificed in order to protect my loved ones. That’s why I would pray they only came to rob. No one wants to live with another’s life on their conscience.
This actually happened to me - obviously not in a situation precisely identical to what the OP describes, but darn close. In Micronesia, I lived in an isolated house (no phone, few neighbors) where the master bedroom was directly over the carport. My husband was off-island and I was home alone one night. Previously the back window of our car had been (for reasons I won’t go into here - long and different story) been smashed, so it was very easy to get inside the car.
I awoke at 3 am to hear some f–kwit directly under me, in the carport, trying to hotwire our car. Either he was incompetent or hotwiring a car is always a noisy process; in any case, the half-hearted sounds of the engine trying to turn over caused me to awaken from sleep with sudden, absolute clarity about what was happening just under my floorboards.
My reaction? I ran downstairs and out to the carport, screaming “GET THE F–K AWAY FROM MY CAR YOU F–KING A–HOLE!”
He bolted in horror and I chased him down the road, not (and I guess I should not regret this,but I do) able to catch up with him.
This was about 20 years ago. It’s been a good couple of decades, thanks to the self-knowledge I gained that night: when push comes to shove, my anger will trump my fear. Good.
“Arrested” is not the same as “charged”. “Arrested” only means that you are detained under caution* on suspicion of committing a criminal offence, which means that the detainee has the right to legal representation and the police have the right to question you.
*" I’m arresting you on suspicion of XXXX. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. "
Well, unfortunately I don’t have a gun, a hallway, stairs or a downstairs for them to lead to but: Hide in the shadows and wait, hoping that he will leave?
I think the first thing I would do is try get out of the house, call 911 and disable his vehicle if it’s unattended.
**Turn on the light, with your gun pointed at him, and yell at him to get the fuck out? **
No, I’m not interested in a Mexican standoff or a negotiation. I will either immediately rock out with my Glock out or avoid a confrontation as the situation warrents.
If you don’t have a gun, what do you do?
I don’t have a gun, so pretty much what I said before. If I can’t get out, then play a little chin music with a MagLite or some other instrument.
If there is more than one burglar, what do you do?
Kill them both and make it look they shot each other.
Are you male or female?
All man baby.
Do you have kids?
No.
I’m sorry, but can some of our internet attorneys provide links to either the actual law for their state or cases where homeowners were charged for shooting an intruder (assuming they didn’t go over the top)?
I think between years of playing paintball, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Battlefield 2, and Rainbox Six, I’m pretty much desensitized to firing on human shaped targets.
You should only own a gun if you are completely comfortable with it. Most likely you grew up around guns and they’re second nature. The previous posters who hemmed and hawed should absolutely stay away from firearms.
Hopefully the robber will be wearing movie squibs.
Well, except that where do you plan on hiding 200 lbs of meat? And if you get caught, I think it becomes a bit more complicated than mere self defense.
Here’s the link to Wikipedia’s page on the Castle Doctrine. It has a bunch of links to actual state legislative websites too. It does appear that some states allow one to use lethal force if one has reason to believe the invader is going to commit burglary.
I suspect we’d start yelling and that’d probably panic the burglar into running, and nearly inevitably he’d break his neck tripping over something in our maze of furniture.
