Why do people think it's okay to keep trying to rob me?

[Renegade Paladin]

Wow. Scary stuff. Glad my own state seems to be fairly reasonable. Dang. I think that's about the most I can without getting political. Still though, .

How is permitting firearms ownership unreasonable or frightening? Someone with intent to break the law and kill will be perfectly happy to break the law to get a weapon to do it with.

[Mystic Muse]

Nothing is a 100% effective, thus my examples of guns jamming, ect. Failure for both is not likely to happen. My entire point was that it is a viable alternative if you want it.



According to me? Never said they were better than guns. According to me? Never claimed hitting was easy, or even mentioned anything about it. There is no need to be so hostile or start making a strawman out of what I was saying.

I suppose I could have clarified and said the shaped pulse extends the range of the probe, but I thought it was common sense. I wasn't even trying to touch on the clothing/thickness thing, just mentioning the shape pulse technology. But, there is always this. So, I wouldn't really doubt it would work on them.

A. that's what's more commonly known as a stungun and B. you'd be lucky to get that close if the other person had any form of self defense. If the person isn't running they probably have some form of it and you'll be lucky to get away with just a knife wound. of course there is the possibility that they're just that stupid but a taser is a lot safer than one of those.

[SDF]

Okay? The point was the end result, not the method of delivery.

[Trog]

I was stung by a bee today and was jumping around in pain (admittedly, the jumping was because I was wearing sandals and trying to kick the thing out from between my toes)

Stung between the toes? Ow. >.<

[Jack Squat]

Stung between the toes? Ow. >.<

Tell me about it. I swear those things are out to get me. Must've been payback over that hornet I killed a couple days ago.

[Mystic Muse]

Tell me about it. I swear those things are out to get me. Must've been payback over that hornet I killed a couple days ago.

I swear my brother is on "bees most wanted" because they always seem to target my family. must be all the hornets and wasps nests we've killed.

[Trog]

Perhaps the real culprit in the OP was a gang of delinquent bees. >_>

Spoiler

Show

[Jack Squat]

I swear my brother is on "bees most wanted" because they always seem to target my family. must be all the hornets and wasps nests we've killed.

I've been stung by just about everything on land that can (save scorpions). Even had them attack me in other ways (wasp flew straight into my eye then just flew off). I'm stepping up my game now so that my life will be like that Inglorious Basterds movie, but replace the Nazis with bees/wasps.


EDIT: @Trog I completely forgot about that skit. Even if I'm too young to remember it

[nothingclever]

Nothing is a 100% effective, thus my examples of guns jamming, ect. Failure for both is not likely to happen. My entire point was that it is a viable alternative if you want it.



According to me? Never said they were better than guns. According to me? Never claimed hitting was easy, or even mentioned anything about it. There is no need to be so hostile or start making a strawman out of what I was saying.

I suppose I could have clarified and said the shaped pulse extends the range of the probe, but I thought it was common sense. I wasn't even trying to touch on the clothing/thickness thing, just mentioning the shape pulse technology. But, there is always this. So, I wouldn't really doubt it would work on them.

You implied those things at the very least. Why backtrack if you spoke so confidently before? If the taser isn't equal or better than a gun why did you bring it up over and over again as an alternative to one and make a big deal out of its stopping power?

Are you going to tell me next that you never actually said the exact words "a taser is a good alternative to a gun"? If so, you're just nitpicking. If you bring up the use of tasers and make comparisons to guns to defend them then you might as well have said exactly that. You definitely never said "Silly me, why did I bother mentioning tasers? Guns are clearly superior." Heck, "viable alternative" implies just as good or at least close to being as good. It's not much of a viable alternative if its effectiveness is vastly lower.

Okay? The point was the end result, not the method of delivery.

And yet you defended and continue to defend its penetration capabilities as if the delivery method was part of the point.

[Trixie]

Besides, philosophically speaking, what is the difference between defending yourself with force and having someone else (i.e. the police) do it for you? If the offender is going to respond in a manner that requires you to shoot him, he will likely respond to the police in a manner that requires them to shoot him.

Simply: if the general populace has difficult access to handguns, it means there are far less guns to steal. It means there are far less gun stores carrying handguns and their ammo to break into (note that doesn't say anything about shops with rifles and shotguns, as those aren't used for crime, usually) - and you cannot do it casually. With small legal market, the black one will be also much smaller and the guns much more expensive.

You're all casually talking about armed robbers, shooting to kill, and gun duels, but these happen only because bandits can arm just as easily as the legal guys, as the guns are plentiful on both markets. Where I live, and armed burglar is an extremely unlikely occurrence (unless he is a part or a large gang, and these don't deal in petty thefts, usually) - simply, getting a gun is difficult, and even if he had it, pulling weapon of any kind during a burglary or robbery automatically means much harsher sentence. They are not out to kill, as they don't want to turn into hunted animals, all they seek is (ill) profit.

Okay, what about rare madmen who are after your life, then? Yeah, in that case it would be nice to have a gun, but would it be enough? I shoot many guns in my life, from airsoft replicas to full powered soviet assault rifles, and I know that I wouldn't want to even touch a gun until I had a hew minutes to calm myself (otherwise, I'd shoot at shadows, and that isn't going to help) and accept the fact I have to shoot other human. Obviously, the night robbery would be as different from these circumstances as possible.

There is also another factor to consider - madmen in my country don't have guns, either. Yeah, I know things like Columbine are rare, but they simply don't happen here. In two of our neighboring countries, Finland and Germany, massacres did happen - they have access to guns. Here? Never, despite a much larger percentage of depressed and ill fitted people. In fact, there was lately one similar occurrence - but since the mad student in question had access to (only) a knife, he managed to (only) slash one woman colleague in the arm before he was beaten, overpowered, and handed to the police. If he had a gun, he would have killed at least a few people, as there was access to a nice shooting position he could have took there.

Frankly, I don't see guns as a solution. It is part of the problem. Yes, I agree, if you draw a gun you have to be prepared to kill - but escalating the arms race between people obscures the fact, that without this arms race, there might not be a big problem at all.

[Trixie]

Yes, guns jam, but that can be cleared in under a second. If a taser doesn't work, it takes a bit longer to get back into action. I'd say that for the range, Bear spray/RAID is better than a Taser, as you don't have to be accurate first time around.

What.

If it is simple case (ahem) of spent case lodging somewhere, sure. If not, in most cases gun becomes unusable without being picked apart and/or being given to gunsmith.

With taser, if range electrodes fail, you still have close range ones available immediately.

In all of the US, people are allowed to own guns. In most of it, you don't need a permit to, just clear a background check showing you aren't a convicted felon or involuntarily committed. I don't want to go into the political issue of gun rights, but there is an inverse correlation between how freely one can keep guns and frequency of violent crimes.

Nope. Unlike what NRA tries to sell, there is direct correlation. Look at countries where guns are absolutely forbidden, like Japan and Singapore - lowest crime rates in the world. Next, ex-Soviet zone (where people had difficult access to guns) - in most places (where mafia does not have access to, say, a corrupted police official) violent crime rates are small. Admittedly, where they had access to corrupt police is was higher, but still not that bad, and things are steadily improving since 1991. After that, comes most European Union states (medium access, medium to low crime rate), then US (high access, high crime rate, a big % of population behind the bars) and finally states (usually failed) where you can own guns freely - Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Afghan, etc. Guess what crime rates they have?

You know, according to NRA, these should be the happiest and safest countries on the planet, right?

And discounting suicides, most of the injuries by their own or a family member's gun is because of stupid mistakes; most notably not checking to see if it's unloaded before handling it.

Yeah, let's add dangerous objects into a household, there is no way they could backfire. Let's give every responsible citizen a bar of TNT, or a vial of anthrax - they, arguably, too, can be used for self-defense

Yes, most people are killed by people they know, and guns do a pretty good job of killing people. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that if there isn't a gun, it's not really a stretch of the imagination that they'll head into the kitchen and grab a chef's knife instead. Violent people will be violent no matter the circumstances.

Except killing people with a knife is difficult, and you can run/defend from one. Also, there are almost no instances of minors killing adults with knives. With guns? Easy.

In the original scenario you posted, a daughter was going into a house because she forgot her keys to her place. All I was saying was that if she lost her keys, how likely is it that she would she have the keys to her parents place? If I lost my keys, I'd either use the garage door (which is fairly noisy) or knock. Neither is really "sneaking in"; of course, our house also gets locked up at night, so I need a key to sneak in. If you want to change the scenario fine, but my answer will still be identify the target before putting your finger on the trigger and you won't have any problems.

I seem to remember things like "shoot as fast as you can, to not give them chances", "shoot to kill", "shoot anything that enters your turf, they forfeited the right to be humans" being said in this thread - not exactly advocating caution and double checking

[Dracomorph]

@Trixie:

Several of your points on gun control are valid, e.g. that madmen having less access to firearms is a good thing. But, and I'm not trying to start a fight here, Europe is not the US. Things that work there would not always work in the States, especially gun control policies.

One simple reason is that there are quite a few rural households that need firearms either for protection from wild animals, or to hunt game for food. Sure, these people could use other methods for hunting, but when mountain lions or bears are a significant threat to your home, a gun quickly jumps from "not needed but helpful" to "if there isn't one in the house, you are much more likely not to survive."

I'm going to stop there, to avoid getting political. Apologies that this doesn't really address the OP in any way; you seem to understand your situation fairly well already.

[Trixie]

Several of your points on gun control are valid, e.g. that madmen having less access to firearms is a good thing. But, and I'm not trying to start a fight here, Europe is not the US. Things that work there would not always work in the States, especially gun control policies.

One simple reason is that there are quite a few rural households that need firearms either for protection from wild animals, or to hunt game for food. Sure, these people could use other methods for hunting, but when mountain lions or bears are a significant threat to your home, a gun quickly jumps from "not needed but helpful" to "if there isn't one in the house, you are much more likely not to survive."

Um, while what you say is valid, I can say I happen to live less than 90 km from one of the most wild and rural areas in the whole European Union. Bears, wolves, wisents, lynxes, wild dogs - name it, they're all over the place. In fact, I went to a few of these remote places during my vacation, two weeks ago - if you remind me I'll post a few photos you could find fairly interesting tonight.

But, you know, while my impression is that populace in these areas isn't heavily armed (save for a few odd members of hunting clubs) and we don't have mountain lions to take care of, the general consent here isn't to happily shoot animals - in fact, shooting most of these animals is illegal (in fact, killing a bear can result in sort of national outrage). If wolves happen to catch a sheep or cow, too bad, all you can count on is a compensation from a state wolf saving fund - people here instead keep good fences and take a wide berth around wild animals, not treat them like a resource to be exploited. Sure, if you have enough money, you can buy a permit to kill a single wolf or bear, but these are expensive, and you'd be asked to stay away from the best specimens.

In fact (I'll keep this short, to not sound political) I think while an animal that wounded a human should be hunted down (but put into zoo, preferably), the "normal" animals, especially rare ones, like lynxes, wisents or wolves have right to live as well as we do, and actually people should do everything they can to preserve them, including marking their land as national parks. Encroaching their lands, especially in large countries, then shooting animals that only defend their territory as pests or killing them for meat (or worse, leisure) without regard for the state of entire species strikes me as just... wrong.

And no, I'm not a vegetarian, and I hate Greenpeace (for personal reasons and their plain greed and stupidity).

[Dracomorph]

@Trixie

Generally, I agree. And it isn't common for any wild animal to be a threat to a human, even in the most dangerous parts of the States. It does happen, though, and I would hesitate to take a rifle from someone who is more easily the victim of an attack.

Also, although the States does have similar laws about killing wild animals, the attitude is very different from what you describe, along with some of the ecology.

There are probably far fewer large predators in the continental US, even discounting urban areas, than there are near you. Oddly, this means that human intervention is required to keep deer population down because they have basically no predators. Deer hunting in the States helps to keep an already ludicrous deer overpopulation from getting worse faster. Rifles are a requirement here for all but the most skilled stalkers.

On the attitude note, I've known farmers, and if they don't strongly suspect they'll get caught, they will likely hunt down or trap a coyote that's killing chickens, permit or no.

I would like to see those photos; I'm always interested to see wilderness areas, especially ones I might never get to visit.

[Jack Squat]

What.

If it is simple case (ahem) of spent case lodging somewhere, sure. If not, in most cases gun becomes unusable without being picked apart and/or being given to gunsmith.

With taser, if range electrodes fail, you still have close range ones available immediately.

Guns jam 99% of the time because of a spent casing or because of a faulty magazine. Given, the latter cannot be changed in under a second, but it's not a deal breaker. If a gun breaks, it needs to be be taken to a gunsmith, but if a Taser breaks, you're not exactly out of the woods.

I know about the close electrodes, but the advantage of a taser is the range. However, if you have to use those, the taser's purpose has failed, and you're at a much higher chance to be attacked in melee range. It's about as effective as pistol whipping them.

Nope. Unlike what NRA tries to sell, there is direct correlation. Look at countries where guns are absolutely forbidden, like Japan and Singapore - lowest crime rates in the world. Next, ex-Soviet zone (where people had difficult access to guns) - in most places (where mafia does not have access to, say, a corrupted police official) violent crime rates are small. Admittedly, where they had access to corrupt police is was higher, but still not that bad, and things are steadily improving since 1991. After that, comes most European Union states (medium access, medium to low crime rate), then US (high access, high crime rate, a big % of population behind the bars) and finally states (usually failed) where you can own guns freely - Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Afghan, etc. Guess what crime rates they have?

You know, according to NRA, these should be the happiest and safest countries on the planet, right?

The comparison, I believe, is normally limited to inside the US, with places like Chicago, (north)New Jersey, New York, LA, etc. having much, much higher crime rates than say Knoxville, Seattle, or Portland. The comparison can also be driven to the UK, where violent crimes have gone up in the past 20 years, about the time guns became heavily restricted there.

With Japan, my personal theory is that they're too busy defending against giant radioactive monsters to go after eachother

Yeah, let's add dangerous objects into a household, there is no way they could backfire. Let's give every responsible citizen a bar of TNT, or a vial of anthrax - they, arguably, too, can be used for self-defense

How would a responsible citizen use these for self defense? Besides, HD is not the only purpose for a gun. You've got hunting and target shooting at the very least. I don't see anthrax faring too well as a sporting good.

Except killing people with a knife is difficult, and you can run/defend from one. Also, there are almost no instances of minors killing adults with knives. With guns? Easy.

Killing someone with a knife isn't difficult; it was the longtime friend of assassins. It's just harder than a gun. You can run and defend from a gun as well, much like my argument against the Taser, they're not some magic device.

Why limit yourself to minors killing adults? While I'm sure it happens more than you're willing to admit (with an average of 400 knife crimes in England and Wales per week, I'm sure several result in adults being killed, plenty of which involve minors). Children kill other children plenty with knives, and adults kill children plenty with knives. Doing a google for child kills parent with gun, it seems much rarer. However, there are plenty of minors killed with guns. I'm willing to bet most of them are from gang activities rather than home disputes.

I seem to remember things like "shoot as fast as you can, to not give them chances", "shoot to kill", "shoot anything that enters your turf, they forfeited the right to be humans" being said in this thread - not exactly advocating caution and double checking

And as you can clearly read, I've been fighting against those - well, except "shoot to kill". While the technical term is "shoot to stop", you're more likely to do that with a shot to the chest than one to their leg. So you do shoot to kill, just until the threat has stopped (they run off, surrender, slump to the ground, etc.)

[Erloas]

Nope. Unlike what NRA tries to sell, there is direct correlation. Look at countries where guns are absolutely forbidden, like Japan and Singapore - lowest crime rates in the world. Next, ex-Soviet zone (where people had difficult access to guns) - in most places (where mafia does not have access to, say, a corrupted police official) violent crime rates are small. Admittedly, where they had access to corrupt police is was higher, but still not that bad, and things are steadily improving since 1991. After that, comes most European Union states (medium access, medium to low crime rate), then US (high access, high crime rate, a big % of population behind the bars) and finally states (usually failed) where you can own guns freely - Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Afghan, etc. Guess what crime rates they have?

That is taking a lot of situations well out of context though. Sure Singapore has a lower crime rate and doesn't have access to guns, but it is also illegal there to litter and can get huge fines and jail for it. And as for the last countries, I don't think its really legal to own guns in most of them either, but there really isn't any one to enforce those laws. The fact that they are generally controlled by local gangs is why they have the levels of violence they do, not because the normal citizen does or does not have access to guns.

Even in the USA things change a lot from one place to the next. When I lived in Phoenix I don't think I knew anyone that had a gun. Where I live now I don't know anyone who doesn't own a gun or 3. Guess which one has more crime and more violent crime? It isn't where I live now.


As for killing wild animals without cause or a license... The Game and Fish seem to be a lot more aggressive about that sort of thing then the police are about various crimes. In fact the Game and Fish have more rights then the police do when it comes to searching people. If you shoot a wild animal in self defense you had better be able to show you were in imminent danger. Even in the case of them attacking livestock, with the exception of coyotes, you have to call the Game and Fish to have the wild animal dealt with and can't shoot them on your own. (legally at least, people do though because there is just too much space for the G&F to patrol)

Although even in terms of self defense of yourself and your house, even if no one had guns that wouldn't stop someone from breaking in. And at that point any confrontation between home owner and burglar would probably go to the advantage of the burglar. Guns in this case give the advantage to the homeowner because the homeowner has the advantage of initiative and cover. If all you had to defend yourself was a knife or bat you have to give up your cover and give ample warning time to the burglar that you are acting against them. Then it comes down to who is better at using a knife or bat or unarmed and I'm going to guess that 99% of the time the burglar is going to have had more practice and is more comfortable with their weapon then the homeowner.
Someone who makes a (partial) living at robbing others is going to have a lot more experience dealing with those situations and is going to have the advantage in any situation where both parties are aware of the other.

The original poster would probably have a good advantage since he has went through basic training and was a soldier for a while. However that is not going to be the case for most people.

[Cyrano]

That is taking a lot of situations well out of context though. Sure Singapore has a lower crime rate and doesn't have access to guns, but it is also illegal there to litter and can get huge fines and jail for it.

lolwut does that have to do with anything?

[Erloas]

lolwut does that have to do with anything?

If you want to compare gun laws and crime rate you have to have a base crime level to compare to. To say Singapore has less violent crimes just because they ban all guns is ignoring so many other variables to make the statement meaningless.

[Cyrano]

If you want to compare gun laws and crime rate you have to have a base crime level to compare to. To say Singapore has less violent crimes just because they ban all guns is ignoring so many other variables to make the statement meaningless.

But...Littering isn't violent crime anyways, so doesn't it's status as "illegal" matter not a whit when comparing these base crime levels of which you speak? I mean, I guess I just don't understand that well, but okay.

Regardless, out of curiosity, what exactly makes individual U.S. states have the same "basic" crime level? What differentiates the comparison of Texas to New York from the comparison of Texas to Singapore?

[Surfing HalfOrc]

But...Littering isn't violent crime anyways, so doesn't it's status as "illegal" matter not a whit when comparing these base crime levels of which you speak? I mean, I guess I just don't understand that well, but okay.

Regardless, out of curiosity, what exactly makes individual U.S. states have the same "basic" crime level? What differentiates the comparison of Texas to New York from the comparison of Texas to Singapore?

The difference is overall governmental control and differences in social attitudes.

In Singapore (very pretty city, BTW), there are many police, and they ticket people for just about everything. Gum, littering, spitting on the sidewalk, on and on and on. Singapore is well known for being a "Fine" city. But the people accept that level of official interference in their lives. The same goes in Japan, where the police come talk to parents on a regular basis, and usually have a good idea who's getting good grades and who isn't. So with this level of involvement in personal lives, people are less likely to commit crimes, because the cops do know who you are and where you live.

In New York and Texas and other places in the U.S, people follow the American concept of Freedom, which is usually held on the basis of "If I ain't actively causing problems, leave me and mine well enough alone!" People are much more independant, for good or for ill, and that's the way it is. So comparing Singapore to the U.S. is not even Apples to Oranges, it's more like Apples to 18 Wheelers.

One country that is often left out of the no guns=no crime is Switzerland. The Swiss have (or at least had) a manditory gun ownership law as part of their "We're neutral, and we plan on staying that way" policy. The Swiss have very low violent crime rates, but is that because you don't want to start trouble with an armed Swiss, or because of their social attitudes against crime?

There is no simple solution. Washington D.C. once had the strictest gun control laws in the country, and was the Murder Capital. My little home town allowed the students a week off in the fall for hunting season, and we had very few violent crimes even though most people were armed.

This does not necessarily equal that...

EDIT: Although everyone has been polite and courtious on what is usually a highy inflamitory topic, expect this thread to be shut down soon. We seem to be straying into politics... Of course the methods of defending one's self is always political, so I'm suprised this thread has lasted eight pages!

[Erloas]

But...Littering isn't violent crime anyways, so doesn't it's status as "illegal" matter not a whit when comparing these base crime levels of which you speak? I mean, I guess I just don't understand that well, but okay.

Regardless, out of curiosity, what exactly makes individual U.S. states have the same "basic" crime level? What differentiates the comparison of Texas to New York from the comparison of Texas to Singapore?

Littering isn't a violent crime, but it is illegal in a lot of places anyway. Here it isn't enforced much because its really difficult to. It was maybe 10ish years ago though where there was some big international incident about someone getting thrown in jail in Singapore for discarding gum or something like that. (I think it was about the same time as the caning thing for the minor vandalism)
Since crime of all sorts is very much related to social and economic situations its not possible to take two places of vastly different social settings and economic conditions and compare them to try to find the effectiveness of the laws in the area.
Crime is also a risk vs rewards thing, and if the risk of something very minor like littering is fairly high it makes it very clear that the risk for something major like robbery is going to be very very high, to the point where it isn't worth even trying for most criminals.

As for comparing levels across states, I don't think that works either for the same reason. Which is what I was trying to reinforce with my other example, the fact that one place and a much higher percentage of gun owners and also had lower crime and both have similar gun laws shows that the correlation between the two isn't that great.

Of course that is getting away from home defense and gun control is very political so I'll stop there.

[Erts]

This has really gotten off topic.
This is not a debate on gun laws, it's someone asking for advice.

[Supagoof]

Right.

So rather then debate the ethics and other aspects of him using a gun, let's turn it into - what clever ways can he make his abode less of a target for these thieves.

I've been thinking about this, and it may be worth it to just trick them. Though I'm not certain how much you want to inconvienence yourself.

My thought is why not show them you have nothing worth taking? I'd say go so far as bring your place down to the bar minimals. Take everything that has any value to you, and see if you can't borrow some space from a relative or friend to store it for awhile (since you mentioned you'd be moving in a few months anyway). Bring it so if they break in - the only things they could steal would be like - a bed, clothes, and food in the fridge.

Now - there is some hiccups to that, one of which is how you post here (laptop or desktop?) - If laptop - great. Then you can carry that with you when you leave and keep it locked in your car (assuming you have a car and it's got a trunk.) If you have a desktop - well then it gets trickier.

Then when you have your place down to the just the bare essentials - leave your door unlocked. If they come in (and they'll probably leave the door open when they leave), there will be nothing worth it to them so they'll stop trying.

Just another thought on a different tactic to take. Again not certain of all the details, but thought I'd throw it out there. What else can the playground think of?

[Kcalehc]

Er ok. So someone bangin' on the door leads directly to get a gun and shoot em? Crazy people you all are.

How about, turn on the light, and shout loudly; preferably mentioning that you are very heavily armed and have just dialed 'IX I I' on your telephonic device. Seriously. Possibly you might also enquire as to their identity, it may be someone you know or some other innocent person in the wrong house. You could also open a window and exclaim to the wider world (assuming there are homes/people nearby) that your domicile is under attack.

There's no need to go into another room with a potentially unknown number of indeterminately armed intruders before at least attempting to give them the opportunity to exercise the better part of valour thus possibly avoiding commencing a confrontation. Most home intruders do not want to get caught and will bolt before you can leave your room - especially when they know they have been discovered and that law enforcement may be on the way.

Sure, after that walk out with yer gun and do all the stuff mentioned before. Or buy a dog - as a bonus they are much more fun when not being broken in to as well.

[Umael]

Er ok. So someone bangin' on the door leads directly to get a gun and shoot em? Crazy people you all are.

*sigh*

Please re-read the OP's post.

The attempted break-in happened twice. The OP got the shotgun after the first attempt, but didn't use it on the second attempt.

Why? Didn't need to use it.

You listed a lot of good alternatives, and that's helpful, but the things is, they are alternatives. Getting a gun is a valid form of defense in certain situations.

Me, I won't get a gun. Why? I don't live alone and accidents happen. If I lived alone, I would be more willing to risk an accident as it is only me I endanger.

Still, if I had a gun, and someone tried to break into my home, I might be inclined to greet them with a warning gunshot while they were in the process of breaking in but not yet inside. If that slim window was closed, I would assess the situation as best I could, and if necessary, defend myself and my loved ones with lethal force.

For the record, I don't have a gun, but I do have a number of knives and associated melee weapons. I wouldn't want to get into a fight with someone who might be armed with a gun, but to protect my loved ones, I'm willing to take the risk.

Do I like this idea? No. Most definitely not.
Do I think this is a bad idea? By itself, definitely.
Would I try to avoid it? Yes. Most definitely so.

I happen to be lucky in that I do not live in a bad neighborhood. I have never had a confirmed instance of someone attempting to break into any residence, my own or someone else's, in which I was. I feel no need to have a gun in my home, do not want a gun in my home, feel that guns are too easy to obtain, and frown upon the gun culture here in America.

That said, if anyone said they wanted to get a gun for home protection, all I would say is train, maintain, and refrain unless necessary. Then go with my blessings and aim true.

[GoC]

I'd rather have the law on my side if anything like that happens. In my state it's legal to use lethal & deadly force if someone breaks into your house.

Just make sure you don't have to. Killing someone is not something you should do. Especially not for a robbery.
Here's a question: Do you think they would kill you while robbing your home if you did not resist?
If the answer is no then just install some hidden cameras and contact the police afterwards. You'll have your stuff back, they'll be in jail and noone will be dead. Even if they did get away your possessions aren't worth their life.
Guns in general seem an unneeded escalation but you know the rules of engagement in your town better than I do.

Also: tasers

EDIT: Am I just sympathetic because I happen to know the kind of people who'd break in and also know they're not particularily unpleasant people and would beopposed to killing (if making off with your money requires killing you they're not going to try it but if they think you'll kill them then it's just "self defenc" on their part)?
Also added bolded part.

EDIT2 for great justice:

I don't want to go into the political issue of gun rights, but there is an inverse correlation between how freely one can keep guns and frequency of violent crimes.

IIRC US has the highest murder rate (and a high violent crime rate) of any developed country.