#2 could be interpreted to be applicable outside of fear of death or great bodily harm. I wouldn’t recommend it personally.
astro, I’ve forgotten your personal situation; you don’t have grandchildren or other little kids running around the house, do you?
I am perplexed by this as well.
As a gun enthusiast for many decades, I highly encourage people to get professional training on the use of firearms. But I also think a lot of people go overboard on this. There have been many, many cases of people (including many women) who have defended themselves with a gun yet were relatively unskilled on the use of guns.
For the OP, it’s not complicated:
- Get a gun. (For home defense I recommend a shotgun.)
- Get some basic training.
- Be safe.
- Understand the law in your state as it pertains to self-defense.
Bone, I need to take a closer look at the laws in the two states you mention, but my contention was not that there are no places where the threat of serious bodily injury or death is the requirement to use deadly force. obbn gave reasonable advice in not having one of those reasons and shooting someone for breaking into your car is going to land you in trouble. Flyer then labelled that as ignorant nonsense and used the condescending “repeat after me” line that that’s not true everywhere and used articles from incidences in Colorado, where that will land you in trouble, and the very first article he linked to made that clear. Again, I’ll have to take a closer look at the two states you mention, but I doubt that shooting someone just for breaking into your car in those places would be justifiable use of force.
New locks.
And a dog.
I haven’t forgotten the most important lesson of CQC training. Don’t do it unless you have no other choice. If you have any choice, stay in an armored vehicle. If you know bad guys are in a building, level it up firing into it with explosive ammunition or bombing it to rubble. Don’t go in there unless the mission is so important it’s worth losing guys to do it.
As for the rest of your spiel, I am not saying others shouldn’t have the right to have their own arsenal with my post. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t, but the point is, maximizing my chance of being alive to troll this forum 10, 20, 30 years from now, I assess that my best chances are to book it and not have a gun. I think the credible statistics support my strategy best.
Now, if/when I have vulnerable people living with me (wife, kids, or I survive to be elderly), that equation might change. Obviously, though, the first line of defense has to be better doors, better windows, and better locks. Also, ideally, sensors or some kind of method to detect strangers snooping around the yard. (that’s what a dog can be for, though they have a rather high false alarm rate)
Even if you fully intend to shoot intruders as a first line of defense (rather than a last resort), you need to be awake and to know where they are coming from for a reasonable chance at succeeding. Hence you need locks they can’t just pick and doors they can’t bash in on the first kick and windows that won’t break with a rude gesture.
As for losing property - I don’t think lethal force is justified to defend property.
Washington I’d say that’s a no no. TX, at night, you’d probably be okay. I’d still recommend against it as tactically it seems to put you in more risk. I think it is reasonable advice to say that lethal force should only be employed when there is reasonable fear of great bodily harm to one self or another. It’s also reasonable advice to recommend looking at the state laws that are applicable since the laws do vary by state.
The most reasonable thing to do first would be to change the locks. Here’s one that can be re-keyed easily.
Agree. Even in states where the law is technically on your side, it’s still possible, and even probable, in those states for the local prosecutor to charge you anyway. Especially somewhere like Florida or Texas, where the criminal justice system is infamous for false convictions and high incarceration rates. I wouldn’t risk it - you might win, but as they say in Texas, you may beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride.
Yes but how much of that is because of the kinds of people who buy guns are more mentally unhealthy? Only 22% of Americans own guns, of those 22% are they on average more traumatized, aggressive or paranoid than you’d find by chance? Are people in the ghetto more likely to own guns than people who live in safe suburbs?
It is like with pit bulls. Supposedly part of why pit bulls are aggressive compared to other breeds is because their owners are more likely to be mentally ill, engaged in crime, abuse drugs, etc.
So they’re saying there’s still a significant chance of a gun accident occurring in a house without a gun?
I’m going to chime in here and second all those who said (in essence) “take care of basic security first”
Maybe your situation and personality allow for a dog, maybe not, but it’s an idea worth at least considering before getting a gun.
Before you get a gun, ask yourself these; what is your experience with firearms, what was your position on guns and gun ownership before your keys and stuff were stolen. What makes you think having a gun in the house will cause you to be any safer or more immune to being robbed?
If you want to get a gun, I’m all for it. I own a few, mostly for recreational target shooting and just to exercise my right to own guns. Plus fosterling has expressed interest in competitive shooting. I don’t keep guns for home defense from criminals, that’s not how I was raised around guns.
I’m not saying owning a gun for home defense is a bad idea, but it is a bit more complex than buying a firearm, getting some training and practice with it and thinking it’s all good. Could you, would you, consciously and deliberately use deadly force, with the intent to kill someone who is threatening you or your family without flinching? If that situation were to come to pass, do you understand what the emotional and mental aftermath would be for you if you had to kill someone in defense of your family? Do you have any plans, or even vague ideas on how to cope with that?
Again, I’m not trying to discourage you from firearms ownership, just pointing out a few things I see overlooked in almost every discussion of this nature.
Partly, yes. They should be prepared to commit themselves to some level of training and experience with the weapon, and the people who advise the use of such a weapon typically have hundreds of hours of gun-handling experience, which enables them to advise with such confidence.
I’ve made my claim. Please feel free to express your own counter-opinion as to the minumum training and field experience you would recommend, for a first-time gun owner to have realistic assurance that the weapon would be safe and effective in his hands.
You might even like to embellish your response with a general outline of your own training and gun-use experience, as a reference point that might be regarded as typical.
Personally, I have hundreds of hours with guns in my hands, and basic training in their safe use, and I consider myself ridiculously unprepared to use a firearm in a confrontation.
I’ve been a defensive firearms instructor certified by a major national organization that (at the time) was endorsed by many large law enforcement agencies as providing a high quality of training. Our basic self-defensive shooting classes for safety, basic marksmanship, and pistol or shotgun personal defense didn’t add up to more than fifty hours all told, after which students were capable of safely handling, loading, field stripping, and cleaning an autoloading pistol; putting five shots inside the 8 ring of a B27 target at 30 feet or more; knowing the laws about gun handling, transportation, and use; able to draw and fire two rounds into center of mass of a B27 target at 21 feet in under two seconds; and understanding basic tactics in home defense and shooting in low light and other real world conditions. The vast majority of police officers don’t have “hundreds of hours of gun-handling experience” in terms of on-range time.
If, for whatever reason, you consider yourself “ridiculously unprepared to use a firearm in a confrontation,” despite “hundreds of hours with guns in my hands,” then you should seek professional advice and remedial training which can counsel you on the laws and liabilities of using a firearm for self-defense and correct any deficiencies in your firearms technique or preparation. A firearm is not some arcane object requiring many years of study to unfold its inner functions, and becoming essentially competent with the use of a firearm for defense should be the work of a few dozen hours of initial training and an hour or two at the range once a month, if that. This isn’t going to prepare you to pull off a daring rescue of the President who is being held by hostages in a badly written movie that Morgan Freeman was brought in to class up or to hunt down the refugee of a failed supersoldier program who has gone rogue and is now a danger to the public (or so you’ve been told), but it is adequate to safely and knowingly use a firearm to ward off or stop someone foolish enough to enter your home with ill intent.
Stranger
Hundreds of hours doing what?
I see in a later post you teach this kind of thing, but the point remains that during a panic, this goes out the window, that’s why you practice. I mean, yeah, those rules are important, but what I was speaking about was practicing getting your gun from it’s storage spot to being ready to fire after being woken by (for example) the sound of your door being smashed in or glass breaking.
People get a gun for protection, put it in their nightstand and when the shit hits the fan, they’re lost. They’ll forget how to load it, they’ll realize they keep the key in their purse, they’ll have no idea how to turn the safety off in the dark because they only went to the range once or twice when they first got it etc. And also, as I mentioned earlier, most (all?) people don’t know how they’ll react in that situation. You think you’ll know, but until someone is in your house, you don’t actually know. And, furthermore, what it really comes down to is, can you pull the trigger? Unfortunately, if someone breaks into your house, if they have a gun and they find you with one as well, you need to shoot first or they will. At least that’s the assumption you need to work with.
If you’re not sure, you may be better off keeping a baseball bat under your bed and hoping the intruder doesn’t have a gun. But, keep in mind, in a hallway, you have to make stabbing/poking/pushing motions with anything long. You can’t swing a bat in an area that’s only 4 feet wide, but many people don’t think about that because they don’t practice.
Having said all that. A dog is great. Assuming you have the ability to have one, it’s a great way to get the bad guy to just move to the next house. My dogs will start barking while the robbers are sitting at home just thinking about my house. Sure, they’re small and clearly not going to hurt anyone, but they’re yappy and assuming the robber isn’t looking for something specific, they’ll get them to go to the next house. Also, when my dogs start yapping, the dogs on either side of my house start barking as well.
There’s also a ton of ‘how not to get your house burglarized’ articles where the author either is an ex-con or interviewed several. They offer plenty of tips, but one I usually see is to leave a car in the driveway. If they can avoid it, a robber would much rather break into an empty house. You can do the BS with the lights on and off, but if your car is out front, you’re probably home. In fact, the last one I saw, the guy said he (and all the other ex-cons he knew) said they’d ignore lights that seemed to be on a schedule, dogs barking, ADT signs, but they’d never go into a house with a car in the driveway and suggested, if at all possible, moving your car from your garage to your driveway (and/or leaving it at home) when going on vacation, as that was the single biggest deterrent.
Look, I got no problem with guns, but they need to be handled with a lot of respect, a lot more than most people have for them. It’s like doing electrical work. Turn the switch off and then test the wires, all of them, even the white one. If you walk away, test them again when you come back. The OP seems nervous. I’d strongly suggest he take some home/armed defense classes and get some time in at a range with a .22. On top of that, learn the laws of his state. As has been said, you can’t shoot someone breaking into your car (except in certain cases if you happen to be in it). If he’s that nervous about gun ownership, there’s some other things he can do in the mean time. Fortify doors, add standalone alarms to entry doors so he’s alerted to them being opened. Maybe even remove the screen from the bedroom window so he can exit that way if there’s an intruder coming in (if he’s on a ground floor). Perhaps pick up some pepper spray.
Also, if he’s in a small enough city, talk to the police, often times they’re more than happy to give you some practical tips to protect yourself. The police in my town are always giving helping us out that way.
Pretty much this. If you do really want to go handgun, go revolver and something pocket sized like a S&W 49. Amateurs keeping one in the pipe on autos make me nervous.
Because…?
Modern double action autoloading pistols are no more hazardous than a revolver, are less prone to contamination, are faster to reload, and frankly provide less recoil for size and mass. The slightly greater complexity of the slide action and decocker (if it has one) are easily learned by anyone who has the intellectual capability to cook food or change a lightbulb, and the only real reason to use a revolver is if one lacks the dexterity or hand strength to rack the slide on an autoloader, in which case they should probably move to a shotgun or pistol caliber carbine.
The people pointing out the disadvantages of a rifle or shotgun (length, difficulty maneuvering, et cetera) seem to be ignoring the essential rules of home defense, which is to find a location with good cover, hunker down behind it, and wait for the police while being prepared to defend against an (unlikely) aggressive intruder. The last thing you want to do as a defender is try to chase down intruders, give up initiative and cover, and certainly to follow them outside or present police with uncertainty over who the perpetrators are. A pistol is best thought of as a marginal weapon designed to be carried easily on person and allowing you to fight your way to a better weapon if the aggressors are not dissuaded by the display, and to be used when a more capable weapon is not at hand. A pistol will work for self defense just as a fork can be used to whisk eggs, but a shotgun or light carbine is more capable and accurate and easier to use.
Stranger
I think it’s situational. I have lots of other humans in the house and if there is something going on I’m most likely going to be doing some clearing and be exposed during the process of locating and securing them.
The process of securing a long gun while still having it available for quick access is more difficult than for a handgun as well. It’s a surmountable obstacle, but not as easily as a handgun.
I’m not arguing that a pistol doesn’t have its place in home defense, but the line or reasoning that “shotguns and rifles are horrible terrible for home invasion defense,” is just not remotely credible. Given a choice I’d take a 12 gauge with #3 or #4 2-3/4" shells over any pistol caliber weapon for interior shooting, and #0 shot or a lever action carbine in .30-30 Winchester or autoloading carbine for area defense, both of which are gate loading and easy to top off without pulling a magazine and don’t have the stigma of an “assault weapon” like an AR-15 pattern rifle.
Stranger
Shotguns and Carbines aren’t terrible, for sure. At some point there is some personal preference going on, as well as specific circumstances. I imagine if shit goes down I’ll likely need a hand free to corral other family members including carrying them so a hand free is pretty valuable.