nm as well, he edited his post out so I won’t quote it.
I would be fine if a gun was lumped in with all the cases where “a weapon was necessary”. If the criminal doesn’t flee after “Hey!”, I would say a weapon was warranted. Whether that weapon is a gun or a remote control, if you have to physically defend yourself, it might as well be with a gun.
Even though we can’t know for sure, what is your gut feel as to how often a weapon is needed? If I had to guess, I would guess that most of the time, a simple “GET THE F OUT OF HERE!” would cause the criminal to flee. So at least 50% of the time, I think the the criminal will leave if confronted.
I’m not sure if it’s applicable, but we could look at other countries where guns are prohibited to see what happens. In those cases, almost all incidents would not involve guns. So it could be tallied as to how many times the criminal fled or attacked.
If someone breaks in to my house, my pit bull and pit\lab mix will eat them alive.
Of course, their ferocious barking at any sound will probably be a deterrent to an intruder.
As far as guesses go, this one strikes me as reasonable. Earlier Broomstick told three alarming stories about criminals who did not flee when confronted, but I suspect that’s behavior of a minority.
One other data point, from the Victimization During Household Burglary analysis earlier:
So that’s at least 1/4 that did not flee.
Breaking into a house by beating down a door while someone is on the other side, someone who is a stranger to you, is an extremely rare crime in most neighborhoods. Because if you reflect for one second about it, if you wanted to steal something, it’s a lot safer to wait until the house is unoccupied. If you want to pick a fight, a bar is a lot more sure fire. And if you neither are interested in pure violence for its own sake or being a successful thief, why are you doing it at all? It doesn’t make any sense. So you’d have to be both crazy AND violent which is in fact a rare combo in human beings.
I would simply go out the back door. There’s nothing in my house worth getting in any kind of a fight for.
See, that’s the thing - if someone was ONLY interested in stealing stuff they wouldn’t attempt to break into a house where there are very obviously people at home. If someone breaks into a home while people are clearly home then… well, suspecting there’s more than just thievery in the near future starts to make some sense.
On the other hand, even if they are just interested in stealing stuff (like a vehicle from a driveway) surprising them in the act might lead to violence. So yes, arguably, retreating without being seen is your safest option if that’s possible.
Although there is actually one thing in my home worth fighting for: me. If I’m cornered and can’t run I’ll do what I can to defend myself. But yeah - otherwise, stuff is replacable.
I’ve lived in a capital city (London) for 34 years, a coastal town for a year and a country town for 30 years.
Never had any worries about burglars or other home invaders.
I’ve never owned any gun (we have strict gun control in the UK) and if I had to call the beat police they wouldn’t be armed either.
For myself, living in as big a city as Idaho can provide, I have absolutely zero fear that anybody will ever attempt to break down my door, ever. If somebody did try to break down my door, I would call the police, then (if necessary), grab my keys and retreat to my bedroom and lock that door. If they started working on breaking through again to follow me, out the window and to my car I’d go.
I will say, if I ever did develop an irrational paranoid terror about intruders, I would indeed take steps. Solid core doors. Solidly locked shutters. That sort of thing. Probably cheaper than a gun anyway, and easier to learn to use competently.
The clueless nature of that response betrays great ignorance. Let’s examine a few things re: hitting with bats.
Unless you live in a spectacularly large house or apartment, there are but few areas where you can swing a bat as to hit those baseballs of which you are so proud. Have you ever actually swung a bat in your house? Where are the spots where you can swing it horizontally without it encountering a wall and fucking up your blow? Where are the areas where you can swing it in an overhand or quartering blow without a wall or ceiling or ceiling fixture fucking up the swing? In places like a hallway, where you basically can’t swing it at all, what do you do with it? What points on our luckless intruder’s body do you target? Why do you target those points? How much practice do you have hitting targets that are actively trying to avoid getting hit and may, in fact, be trying to hit you? If you kill him with the bat, without really meaning to, will he be any less dead than if you’d killed him with a gun? Do you really take self-defense in your home seriously at all or is this just another internet pissing contest to you?
Wait, can you dual wield cats?! :eek:
For me, living somewhere there’s very little chance an intruder has a firearm… hmm… the sword by the door, the sword in my kid’s room, the sword in the family room, the dagger in the bedroom… choices, choices… yep, backdoor. 
Since you don’t know me from Adam and have never been to my house I’d say you are the one bogarting the ignorance here. My point about hitting a baseball is I have experience connecting with a very small object going at a high speed so I have every confidence I can hit a large object going at a slow speed. The thing about a swinging aluminum baseball bat is there a massive amount of space between us in which to connect and no place on a human body where contact doesn’t severely hurt.
Any good home defense system is multi-pronged.
I am not “anti gun people” but know better than to put reliance solely upon weaponry. We have a multi-layered home defense strategy, which I will not reveal here to avoid giving advantage to the bad guys, but it does include an attack spaniel puppy who’ll go right for their shoelaces, tripping them up so I can bash them on the head with my no-stick saucepans. 
I mean, you have to take the feat, and there are dex requirements…
My place is on the 10th floor and my door is un-breakable without an axe. I don’t have anything worth spending the effort to break the door. What horrible thing did I do to this person in your scenario?
TWO cats! Even with the negative modifiers for the off arm that intruding 1st level Mage is fucked.
The “You don’t know me!” gambit…always a dependable fallback when one can’t or won’t answer any of the questions that were actually asked. My guess is you haven’t more than a foggy notion of what to do with that bat, and even that is informed mostly by shitty movies and tv shows. But hey, you hit some baseballs, once.
Hey, I was responding to an urban tactical expert who is pretty good with a bo staff. What other defense can I offer?
I have no idea why you think a pistol is supposed to be better at the ranges you’d encounter in a house. They go through that training during your monthly militia weekend?
We’re done, dood. Your opinions in this matter are too firmly rooted in willful ignorance for me to bother with you. Good luck to you and your aluminum bat. I hope there is no spouse or child whose safety might depend on you.
To paraphrase Tim: It’s got big, nasty sharp teeth makes teeth gnashing gestures…it can leap <---------------------->…look at the bones, man!
That’s cool. I in turn hope you don’t have children.