:rolleyes: :dubious:
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 suspect most of the people expressing these views have little experience with handguns or other home defense firearms…and no training as well…
I am having a hard time envisioning this setup. Please explain unless you feel explaining would compromise your security… 
A round chambered in a pump shotgun makes a distinct sound. If there is an intruder in my home, that is what they will hear and they can make their decision what to do next. If they are still in the room when I get there, they get two rounds. (Note: Dead people make poor witnesses!!!)
My Mom came to see me one night and since it was two or three in the morning and she used her key, this is just what she heard. She announced loudly and clearly, “HLANELEE, THIS IS YUOR MOTHER. PLEASE DON"T SHOOT!!!”
(hijack): Someone nearby is shooting something this morning. I’ve been hearing gunfire for the past ten or fifteen minutes.
When I lived in a San Francisco apartment with two other employed young women, I took a day off. Was relaxing in my room with a book, and heard some banging that sounded indoors. After a minute I wandered out to check, and there was a stranger with my roommate’s new tape-recorder in his hand.
I said, “Pardon me, who are you?”. He said, “Scuse me Miss, I must have the wrong place”, set down the item, and went out the back kitchen/fire-escape door.
What I did: grab phone, dial 0, “Operator, give me the police!”. (This before 911 was in use.)
Different occasion (slight hijack), was loading up my Chevy for a visit to the folks, and a guy came around the front of it from across the street, and said, “Pardon me Miss”. I looked up and he had an automatic pointed at me. “Give me your purse.” I decided this was no friend of mine, didn’t see why I should go along with his ideas, and turned my back on him, although speaking an expletive to acknowledge his existence. Visualized a bullet ploughing its way through my own personal back, ribs, lungs, etc, and turned back around, taking my purse (wallet) out of my purse (handbag). Decided I didn’t want him to have my driver’s licence etc, so pulled all the bills out of the wallet and handed them to him. He took them and jogged back across the street in a relaxed way.
Back upstairs, called the police, who came, and gave them quite a good description of him from the back. And of his handgun. Funny, they were at least as interested in the description of another man who he had jogged past on the sidewalk over there. Since, I’ve made a guess as to why they were.
In both cases, I think the guys were professionals. It’s always easier to deal with professionals.
Anyway, no, you don’t know how you are going to act in a startling new situation. And speaking as an untrained person, capturing someone to hold for the cops strikes me as more complicated than you want, in a high-intensity situation. Better they go away.
I’ve never shot anybody and the only gun currently in the house would take me ten minutes to get to and unlock (in a box in the back of the closet - I’ve got kids,) but in my young and dumb days, I was in situations where sudden and extreme violence was sometimes called for. I don’t know for sure, but I figure if I could beat down somebody with a pool cue, I could probably shoot somebody too.
The real person they’d have to worry about is my wife. She grew up in rough circumstances, is a dead shot (it’s her gun,) and has worked to hard for what she does have to let anybody threaten it…or her scence of security.
Peace - DESK
This has obviously changed from a poll about gun use to a debate about the same.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Gun, aim for center of mass, announce that they are under arrest and should lie down on the ground. I may, after all, still be mistaken. If they run, let them go, if they charge, double-tap to center of mass, continue fire. If they lie down, continue to aim at center of mass, call police. My apartment is small enough and, ah, crowded enough that the presence of a second intruder would be detected nigh-instantly, unless possibly they are hiding in the tub.
If I have no gun, there are a number of large and heavy items up to and including furniture that can be used. I have, in fact, once slain a 486 to stop someone from mugging me… they had a knife, I had a computer on my shoulder. Mass won.
I fail to see any objection to this, morally.
A cop aquaintance told me that if you’re in this situation and have a gun, shoot to kill first and then fire a shot into the ceiling. When the cops arrive, tell them the hole in the ceiling was an initial warning shot and that you only shot to kill when the intruder failed to heed the warning. Hard to say how well this advice would work.
Closer to reality: I have a wife and two young daughters and live within a mile of a prison. Last year, a prisoner escaped from a transfer van and went roaming through the neighborhood, invaded a woman’s home and stole her car. (he was eventually caught after leading the cops on a chase, wrecking the car in the process). SO, if I come upon a stranger in my house, there’s a good probability he’s a desperate criminal of some sort. I don’t own a gun, but I do have several cans of chemical spray squirreled away throughout the house. My plan would be to grab a can of spray and the large wooden dowel kept under the bed and get me and mine out of the house pronto, run to a neighbor’s (whom I know owns a gun) and call 911. If the intruder blocked my egress or otherwise threatened us, I’d probably go into berzerker mode: spray him with the mace/pepper spray then start wailing on him with the dowel until it broke, then jab the splintered end through his heart (who knows, he could be a vampire )
Great advice for someone living in a first-floor apartment.
If I had a gun which I don’t because I don’t trust myself with one I would most likely hold off until he came at me with a knife or refused to drop his gun. I have to have control of the situation.
Since I do have kids in the house, and because I can only assume that the home invader has no respect for our lives and most likely carries a weapon, Ill test his willingness to escape by acknowledging his presence. If not, I’ll probably go at him with my baseball bat and hammer him into a senseless pulp while the wife calls 911.
Okay, here’s what you should do. Get your family together and leave the house as quietly as possible. Take your gun with you, if you have one. Try not to confront the burglar at all, if you can possibly help it. Only use the weapon if he confronts you while you’re trying to leave. Don’t go and investigate the noise, call the police and leave investigation and confrontation to trained professionals. Going to another part of the house to confront the burglar is a bad idea. You put yourself at unneccesary risk, and if you deliberately seek confrontation then it’s not self-defence (in my opinion, at least, the law may disagree)
Peter, what if you don’t have anywhere else to go? Some of us only have four ‘rooms’ in the apartment, counting the hall. One exit. (Excepting the window.)
Would you break open your window to escape?
You would like living in Alaska then. It is legal to shoot intruders in the back as they flee away from your house:
But that’s not the scenario in the OP, which specifically metions noises coming from another part of the house. (I live in a one bedroom flat, myself, BTW.)
If I was in my bedroom, and heard someone crash throgh the door, I’d be straight out the window. No need to break it, it opens.
Note also that I allowed for the possibility of encountering the burglar as you leave. I’m just saying that you should not deliberately seek him out. Avoid contact with him altogether if possible.
Ever since taking out a four-foot section of cinder-block wall on my property last summer using nothing but a three-pound sledge, I have often thought about keeping it close at hand at night to deal with potential intruders.
Call it the viking in me.
A classic exmple of why this is not always practical. I woke up one night hearing glass breaking some where in my house in the middle of the night. By your method I should have gotten my family out the windowand woke up the neighbors to call the cops. What I did do is pick up my gun and go check out what happened carefully. Turned out a picture my wife hung right by the back door had fallen off the wall and the glass in it shattered. Could have just as easily been a burgler breaking out one of the galss windows in the door, it was impossible to tell. I have a lot of suspicious noises over the years, only a couple turned out to be burglers. Never had to shoot anyof them but I did hold one at gunpoint until the cops arrived. .
Generally speaking, that’s overall decent advice. For anyone not 100% sure of their “nerve” (for want of a better word) or their ability to handle a weapon in the face of adversity, it is actually the smarter move, when & where available.
If anyone unlucky enough to be home burgled goes to confront the intruder with a weapon, they’d best be damned ready to use it if need be, and to also be ready to use lethal force. And when it comes to lethal force, many folks who may think they can really can’t when it comes to “the crunch.”
Tha last thing you want in these situations is to “freeze” just because you can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger, swing the baseball bat, stick the knife in him and cut him, etc., and allow the intruder to gain the advantage by taking away your weapon and turning it upon you and/or your family.
One thing I wouldn’t do is point the gun at him and not shoot. Several years ago, a student here pointed his gun at an unarmed burglar and didn’t shoot. The burglar ran out of the house. The police apprehended the burglar coming back to the scene of the crime, armed with a gun he picked up at his house.
originally posted by lalaith
This says you can use force (not deadly force) to prevent or terminate a trespass or unlawful interference with the property. For example, a person could probably take someone by the arm and remove him from a front yard where he is trespassing if he refuses to leave when told.
This means I can use deadly force if I would be justified in using force and I reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent the other person from committing one of the listed crimes. It does not allow a person to use deadly force against another who is simply standing in the front yard. There has to be some reason to believe the commisssion of one of those crimes is imminent, and simply trespassing isn’t enough. If it was , the word “deadly” could have been added to 9.41 and 9.42 wouldn’t be necessary.