They we're lucky. Had it been my house, I would have never said a word and they would have never had a chance to run. I don't believe in giving a thug a chance to give up (read as: a chance to shoot me) when they break into my house.
Can't Shoot Them Okay, let's recap the facts. The bad guys knock on the door for about 2-3 minutes. The homeowner is home, but he doesn't answer. Then the bad guys break in with force. The homeowner now realizes that the reason they knocked was to try to see if anybody was home, and since nobody answered the door, they assumed the place was empty. So they break in. Now the homeowner aims a rifle at them. Can he shoot? Maybe not. He might have to give them a chance to surrender, or escape. How can he say that he was "in fear for his life" when he knows that the intruders tried to ensure that they were breaking into an empty home, and they took steps to avoid a confrontation with anybody? I say, hold 'em at gunpoint and do a citizen's arrest, but DO NOT just open fire on them at first sight. My answer would be totally different if they had broken in without first checking to see if the house was empty, or if there was other evidence that they intended to have a confrontation with the victim or witnesses. Naturally, "home invader" armed robbers should be shot to pieces at the doorstep.
Gunsmoker, a common trick amongst home invaders is to knock on the door to get you to answer, presuming that you will be caught off-guard when they force their way into your home. Just to give an anecdotal incident, several years back a friend of my step-mother and her husband had just returned home. Three men came to the garage door and knocked on it. The husband answered the door thinking it was a neighbor and the three men forced him back inside and held him at gunpoint while they took turns raping his wife. His wife heard a gunshot, and the man who was raping her got up and ran away along with the other two men. She doesn't know what happened, maybe her husband decided that he was going to make an attempt at the invader's gun, but when she came into the den she found her husband dead with a single bullet wound to the head. This scenario happened in an upper middle class neighborhood only about a half mile or so from where my father and step-mother live. The police eventually caught the men involved, and they went to prison, but the damage had been done. Because of that situation I always answer the door prepared for possible battle. For her own reasons, my wife never answers the door, and if I am home and go to answer a knock, she will always go to the bedroom where her personal defense weapon is located. To many this may sound like paranoia, but combined we have too much unfortunate history with criminals to be trusting of anyone we do not know well. As to this story, I read it originally on fark.com (maybe some of you are familiar with the site). Anyway, the thread attached to the news article was filled with bleeding hearts discussing how it wasn't right to kill a person over property (in response to many who said they would have shot). Additionally, there were others who even went so far as to say that the homeowner was wrong because he "laid in waiting" for the perps with a rifle inside his home instead of calling out that he was home and was armed. Personally, I have a problem with the homeowner myself. My problem with him is that for starters he had to load his rifle first, and secondly he didn't shoot the burglars when they stepped foot into his home. I am a firm believer you do not give a criminal invading your home a second chance to come back and harm you later. Thankfully Georgia has a castle doctrine in effect and I do not have to worry about being potentially charged with a crime, as my grandfather faced many years ago when he shot a home invader in Florida.
Re: Can't Shoot Them We just have different ideas of what freedom is. I believe in complete freedom; he believes in limited freedom. That's all.
I got the link from Fark. Here's the thread in case anyone is interested: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2924221 Yes, Farkers are a nifty bunch with some strange ideas. Of the comments within the thread I found the sub-thread on Dragon's Breath most interesting... which lead to this gem of a comment concerning all the fancy rounds you can get for a 12 gauge: They have some amusing shotshells out there, shopping for them is like looking at bad internet porn "You wont believe what they put in there!!"