What to do when you find a burglar in your house?

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water

the sea
Registered Senior Member
What to do when you find a burglar in your house?



There is another thread on dealing with burglars, but I am interested in the completely practical aspect of burglarly/robbery.


It is night, you are in your bed, and you hear someone breaking into your house, or damaging your car in front of the house.

What do you do?

If you have a gun, you can shoot at the person.
If you don't have a gun, what do you do?

If you think you are physically stronger than them, you go at them, beat them up, tie them up and wait for the police?

What if you are not physically stronger?

Have you ever been in such a situation? What have you done?
 
I've never had that type of problem but would think that to leave them alone and call the police would be the best thing to do especially if you had children.

If you really want a weapon get a shotgun, that way you'll hit part of their body and the pellets don't travel far as a bullet would so your family would be a little safer but you still could lose your weapon to the intruder and get shot.


Firing a weapon could miss the intruder and strike a family member if your not a good shot, which most people aren't. The intruder could also get the weapon away from you and shoot you! Most gun owners don't practice enough to hit a moving target at close range so if you had a handgun the chances of hitting the intruder are slim.
 
Phone the police. Make sure everyone in your family is OK. If you want to try and scare them away, make sure you arent across their escape route, since then they'll almost certainly try to knock you out the way. I would'nt advise trying to arrest them yourself unless you are a policeman or really good at martial arts, and know theyre not carrying a knife.
If the burglars have decided burglary isnt enough fun and want to try assault as well, get to a defendable point like the top of your stairs and get something a couple of feet long to hit them with. In the UK you cant get done for using reasonable force against them. SO if you break their jaw with a stick when they were cahrging you, fine. If you smack them on the back of the head as they run away, not so fine.
The problem is that each situation is different, and the variables are not always clear until after the event.
But here at home just now, if someone was trying to break into a car out front, I think my dad and I could have a good chance of stopping them. (ex-policeman and a competent martial artist, and I would always make sure to stack the odds in our favour by picking up a walking stick or suchlike.)
 
Turn the lights on, make lots of noise, capitalise on chaos, shout things like 'Bill, John, I think we're being burgled' to make the burglar think they are outnumbered. Get someone to call the cops, and stay safe.

Loosing off rounds in the dark is very bad idea. If you can't clearly identify your target, as not being a relative, friend, or neightbour, or unfortunate drunk on your property, you shouldn't go popping caps.

The best course of action though, is to secure your property as best you can, and deter burglars. Don't leave ground floor windows open, or if you must, use window locks, fit PIR lights around your property, and don't advertise expensive items through windows (My TV/DVD lives inside a cabinet with doors on, and so are not visible through the window).

Chances are though, you'll get burgled mid afternoon, when nobody is home. they're burglars, not wrestlers, they want to steal your stuff, not get into a fight.
 
just call the cops then watch them, if they leave, follow them(at a safe distance) that way you know wher ethey ore going with your stuff
 
Well, I certainly do not have a gun because the gun laws here in Germany are just too strict. At the same time I am assuming that the burglar does not have a gun for the same reason.
Furthermore, I would not assume to be physically stronger than the intruder since I am not that strong. Additionally, I would also assume that he is armed with a knife or a club/bat.

So I would not attack him with my fists. I would either use the hunting knifes lying around in my room and count on by fast hands or I would use wooden weapons I use for martial arts practice. There is not need to be physically stronger in that case.
On the other hand, I could just surprise him by standing in a dark corner and hitting him with something heavy and hard.
Another possibility would be to call the police, after all, we have an insurance. I would do that if there are more than one intruder.
 

Woe to any robber who dares to enter our home. My wife just scored a 96% when she requalified for her reserve officer status and Tennessee law-enforcement concealed-carry license--and she hadn't shot a weapon in over a year and was firing a .380 semi-auto my father-in-law had given to her as a gift . . . firing it for the very first time.

I have her old Glock .40 service sidearm on my side of the bed. Both weapons are loaded with Black Talons. We call them the "What-the-fuck-are-you-doing-in-our-house" rounds.
 
If you have a gun, you can shoot at the person.
If you don't have a gun, what do you do?
Click to expand...
Someone tried to do this... and shot his daughter. She was leaving early in the morning to surprise her boyfriend, her father heard the noises coming from her car, shot a round through the window, and hit her in the neck.

The problem with crime is that you are at its mercy. Criminals do not respect life, but the law tries to - so often the law is a hindrance only to those who follow it, and "fighting back" means taking it into your own hands. There is no status quo to restore, no balance to maintain, and nothing to stack the odds in your favour. We are always caught between the law and those who break it.
 

And, yes, accidents like that happen.

Then again, over thirty years, a bunch of thugs tried to terrorize my mother and her only defense was to show the bastards that she had a gun.

Yes, she would have used it.

Would I shoot someone to protect my wife or someone else?

Yes

Would my wife?

Hell yes!!!
 
The problem with a gun is that it only works if you have the initiative, and criminals specialize in not letting you have it. That is what they thrive on. Often, a gun only gives them one more reason to kill you, and one more thing to kill you with.
 

I know from personal experience that it's necessary to defend yourself. Just because my wife and I own guns doesn't mean you have to; and, as for the gun laws, the bad guys still get the guns.

I own the Poor Man's James Bond books. Turn me loose in a hardware store or Wal-Mart and I can have everything to make crude but effective gun . . . .
 
I mean: Imagine a situation where you find a burglar in your home, he is taking things. But upon seeing you, he does not shy away, he keeps doing what he's doing.

What do you do?
What do you say?


(I live in a European country where it is extremely hard to get a gun legally; so this option is out.)
 
A friend of mine who studies martial arts, during a more youthful period in which he was merely fascinated with the image, read a couple of books by an author whose name escapes me. They were cosmopolitan, modern Samurai-assassin stories as far as I could tell. Hefty volumes. Erich von Something, I think. The only reason I remember those books at all is that he delightedly pointed out to me one evening a passage in which the author detailed the number of "lethal weapons" in the average hotel room. For some reason, the number 173 stands out in my mind as the result of his calculations, but the only part of that holding firm in my memory is that the number is over 150.

I do know, however, that the cinematic trick of throwing something before you rush your opponent works on occasion. I might not personally consider a three-inch ashtray a weapon, but I do know some combatants freeze for an instant.

Additionally, it has been explained to me by an Oregon State Patrol trooper that once it comes down to blows, knives make cops really, really jumpy. After all, a maniac with a gun might hit you with a bullet at ninety feet. A maniac with a well-hidden knife at a mere couple of meters (e.g. arrest) will likely not miss if he gets the jump on you.

Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story "The Island", currently republished in The Cat's Pajamas (Wm. Morrow, 2004), comes to mind, as well. Apolitical and laced with a strong dose of hysteria, it hardly serves as any sort of baseline for the purposes of this topic, but is worth a read nonetheless.
 
"We call them the "What-the-fuck-are-you-doing-in-our-house" rounds."

:D

What are Black Talons? they sound kick ass!

I would put on my vietnam (re-enactment) marine flack jacket and helmet, then grab my 18thC camp axe, and smash the intruder brains out.

Of course, my parents would have probably called the police by by the time i found those items.
 
Black Talon appears to be just a cool name:

Black Talon ammunition has recently been found by the FBI to be no more or less effective than other hollow point ammunition.

RKBA.org
Click to expand...

The above was taken from a 1995 letter protesting a CNN report that asserted Black Talons were armor-piercing bullets. Additionally, the time, the Violence Policy Center noted that the Black Talon simply "had the misfortune to have a really scary name".
 
i feel that property is not worth your life. I live in detroit, and most burglers carry weapons, you can call the police, but they might come a couple of hours later if you are lucky. Most of the time we all just get big dogs and keep your doors locked. A lot of houses have metal bars on the doors and windows. But, having your own weapon doesn't always mean anything. A lot of people who live here have their own weapons, but people still get robbed. I have learned to report it to the police and move on.
 
Well, i once had an incident with some people who were held up outside my house by gun point, and it took 6 hours for them to show up. We ended up taking the people to the police station to file the report, all they could say when they finally came to my house was that it was shift change and they were delayed, yeah 6 hours. Police in detroit are pathetic.
 
You could jump out the window, and call the police from the neighbor's house. Why risk your life for some meaningless crap?

A very powerful flashlight can be useful to blind them.
 
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