# You're at home and someone breaks in. Do you shoot/kill them?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-at-home-and-someone-breaks-in-do-you-shoot-kill-them/337019>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [December 23, 2005, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-at-home-and-someone-breaks-in-do-you-shoot-kill-them/337019 "2005-12-23T21:52:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 6

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-at-home-and-someone-breaks-in-do-you-shoot-kill-them/337019/101 "2006-01-03T13:26:03Z")

</div>

> [@Magiver](#):
>
> While I respect your support of your gun laws I’d like to see the long term consequences of crime as a result of it.
> 
> I don’t have a gun at this time but my house is set up for the event of home invasion. I can retire to a defensible spot that allows me to fight a gun-wielding intruder with a bat. He will be as dead as if I used a gun so I guess my response would be to flee if my life was not in danger and shoot if it was. If I lived in a local that frowned on personal protection then they would have to retrieve the body from a nearby river. I don’t feel obligated to suffer a life threatening attack with a prison sentence.
> 
> yojimbo, your American translation was spot on so you must have a few Hollywood movies in your DVD collection. And that was certainly a chunk of change if you lost 100 movies.

I’m not sure what the figures look like. Even when private gun ownership was legal (and that, bar the recent changes that affected even target pistol shooters, was going back quite a bit) it was never widespread enough to be a significant deterrent to crime. But if the argument is that UK laws should allow for more private handgun ownership on account of the vast tide of fivefold burglaries, it’s worth noting that it’s extremely rare for anyone to be burgled this many times, and nearly everyone I know has never suffered a housebreaking in his life.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-at-home-and-someone-breaks-in-do-you-shoot-kill-them/337019/102 "2006-01-03T19:04:17Z")

</div>

> [@newcrasher](#):
>
> There seems to be a lot of misinformed people. I know that most people don’t want to kill anyone, but warning them or giving them an option to flee - or God forbid trying to WOUND them - is foolishness that will only get you and your loved ones killed!  
> …

I think the problem with trying to wound is that it’s hard to do and it could get you into a lot of trouble if it came to trial.

It would be easy for a prosecuter to say “If you felt he was so dangerous that you had to shoot, why didn’t you try to shoot him in the chest?”

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-at-home-and-someone-breaks-in-do-you-shoot-kill-them/337019.md?page=5)