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1. Be very careful if you decide to investigate bumps in the night;
2) While it is statistically less likely for "nice families" to become the victims of home invasions, it does happen;
3) Had the boy been armed with a 5-shot snubbie, he would likely not have had enough rounds to deal with the apparent number of BG's.
Re: 2 OK, just what is to be learned from this "lesson"?
If you have intruders in your home when the statistics say it's unlikely, how does this "lesson" do one single thing to deal with the problem? I think learning this "lesson" is only likely to make MORE people LESS prepared to deal with it when you have folks saying it isn't likely to happen to them.
Were all the intruders armed with a deadly weapon? When you speculate that something might have happened if, there's no "lesson" there, either. Just a board member posting his thoughts we re: to what might have happened IF.
Not suggesting that a 5 shot revolver is the best HD gun, but lessons are learned from actual events and the dead young man was armed with nothing with which to defend his life.
It's easy to see that a home owner with a revolver, facing multiple assailants, could could have fought his way back to safety. No lesson here, either. Just a possibility.
Real lessons:
1. leave the house and call the police from a neighbor's instead of investigating. Or get out of the house to use your cell phone, if you can't.
2. When you hear gunfire after a loved one has gone to investigate unarmed, leave the house and go get help, or at least get to safety before you use your cell phone.
Sorry to be a little hard on you for expressing an opinion, but there's a distinction between real lessons and speculation.