So can you kill a burglar in your house

[SandTiger]

Jaffa, there is an election coming up, is there not?

[Jaffa]

Aye true, but if this is the best they can get excited about then Scottish Independence looks better all the time.

 

China is going through its industrial revolution, India is not far behind, the environment is creaking and yet we talk about this p*ss. Sorry if I cause offence, I don't mean too. Just sick of fox hunting, immigration and this nonsense makingup politics.

 

Maybe I have to just move north again.

[Newt]

SandTiger - to the best of my knowledge, the rules for Murder & Manslaughter are standard across the entire country.

 

There are state-to-state variations on the possible penalties (including states that do have a death penalty and those that do not) but with the possible exception of Louisiana which still uses Napoleonic Code based laws rather than English Common Law, murder has a standard definition.

[Jim Gibbinson]

Bit of an academic debate, really. Most of us would be scared out of our wits if we encountered an intruder in our house and would need to O.D. on adrenalin before we'd be capable of taking aggressive action. And even if we managed to summon up the required level of aggression, how many of us would fancy our chances against a drugged-up 18 year-old, say?

[Ian FG]

A good point Jim, how about three 18 year-old junkies? Or three 28 year-old junkies? The Government seems to assume that the innocent party is always capable of overpowering the intruders and that the amount of force they will use just needs regulating. You won't find many yobs breaking into a lion's den at the zoo because they know they will meet with something that will defend itself very vigorously (not anything worth stealing anyway) I have to say I agree with the American attitude, you break into my house you are going to get a bullet in you, they don't seem to have a problem recognizing the bad guys in these situations.

[rob.i]

My house is alarmed downstairs at night .If an intruder broke in upstairs he would have to climb over me to enter the house same goes for my sons bedroom as we both sleep near the windows

 

[ 09. February 2005, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: rob.i ]

[Jaffa]

quote:

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they don't seem to have a problem recognizing the bad guys in these situations. [/QB]

---

Is that true or are a lot of innocent people shot? What would happen in the UK with things like;

 

Council clerk of works "breaking" into house to turn off water thats pouring into downstairs flat.

 

Early morning CID raid on drug dealers house.

 

The senile or confused who wander into the wrong house.

 

Routine kind of things that happen in big cities and towns surely?

[Alan Stubbs]

Jim Gibbinson:

Bit of an academic debate, really. Most of us would be scared out of our wits if we encountered an intruder in our house and would need to O.D. on adrenalin before we'd be capable of taking aggressive action. And even if we managed to summon up the required level of aggression, how many of us would fancy our chances against a drugged-up 18 year-old, say?

Last April, my next door neighbour had his front door smashed in at 2.15am by exactly that, Jim....

 

So drugged up that he didn't care that the houses round here are all alarmed.

 

Taff hit him with a 5-iron. Flattened the kid, who needed hospital treatment for a gash in his skull as a result of 1 blow. The police reaction was to congratulate him on his restraint. I like that police officer.

 

The interesting thing here, is that the intruder's back was turned when Taff hit him - so it wasn't self defence.

 

The intruder was prosecuted, but chose not to press charges on Taff, thank God.

 

What I'd have done apart from call the police, I just don't know. Not sure I'd have the courage to intervene unless physically threatened - it just isn't in my nature.

[SandTiger]

Thanks Newt - This topic has run on a few sites to date with some expressing a maybe percieved view that in the States if an intruder enters your home you can shoot to kill with no fear of redress whatsoever. Newt you are probably better placed than most to comment?

[Butt Banger]

Just to add my two pennorth, for what it's worth,.....

 

If you are pre-disposed to "having a go" then run into the lions den and take your chances......given that you probably don't know who, how many or what (if anything) they may be armed with I'd suggest that this is probably best avoided.

 

If you wake to find you are being burgled, make some noise, switch some lights on and scare them off......99% of burglars will aviod confrontation if possible.At the end of the day, you may lose your life trying to teach a scumbag a lesson and protect your insured contents......not worth the chance in my book and I'm speaking from experience.

 

Ideally, we would all love to give a burglar a good hiding (at the very least) but the potential downside of doing that is just far too great to make it an option IMO.I don't want my young kids visiting my grave, with their mum telling them how brave daddy was when he got stabbed with his own kithen knife by a no-mark scumbag to whom a 12 year prison sentence means squat.

 

BB