Again this was theft, not robbery, not even burglary, as burglary means you enter a premise (structure) with intention to commit a crime. If I rolled down onto a crime scene where say two men had been trying to steal power equipment, and another had them down on the ground at gun point, my first priority would be removing the armed man from the equation. When a cop shows up and you are standing in your yard in your undershorts with a shotgun pointed at other people,
THAT might be the most hazardous few moments of your life. We don't know "who is who", and the armed man is going to be in serious danger if he does not comply right freaking now to our orders to drop the weapon and stand down, he just might qualify for a body bag and a toe tag. That has happened far too often, and the pro-gun crowd should have caught onto this much, much sooner. Here is some ABC information for all who do not already know it:
YOU CANNOT USE LETHAL FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. You can only use lethal force to prevent the immanent death or severe injury to yourself or others, unless you have been in jail/prison and like the life, and the guys who want to sign on as your proctologist. So, if your car alarm goes off in the driveway in the middle of the night,
CALL 911. You can arm yourselves in your house in case the perpetrators begin to threaten you or others with immanent death or severe injury; but if he's stealing your car, or just your car stereo outside your home, call 911 and wait it out. If the perpetrators come in your house the situation becomes 300% more complicated, but generally, if the intruders are not threatening you with immanent death or severe injury, killing them is pretty much the same. So, if you live where the average response time to your 911 call is 20 minutes and don't know what to do? My advice is either move closer to law enforcement, or buy more insurance on the things you leave outside! I lived in Tenant, Ca. for 5 years (look that up on the map, it's at the base of Mount Shasta) and I didn't have to lock anything up, as nobody knew we were there, and the locals didn't steal from one and other. But I did buy replacement insurance on my snowmobile and motorcycles just in case. I never had to call 911, so I don't have a clue on what the response time would be; probably a half hour or more, and on a day when it had been snowing; who knows?. I had a Deputy Sheriff living a half mile away, so I would have called Jack instead of dialing 911.
Theft is not a reason to kill, unless you want spend and lose everything you have ever made trying to keep yourself out of prison. If you try to stop theft with a gun and it escalates into a killing situation, remember who put the situation into killing mode. If you go outside your home with a gun in American cities and the Police arrive, you may be the one who gets to meet the Coroner. You
CANNOT be too careful when it comes to lethal force, if you care about your life and how you will spend what is left of it. I hope you live your lives fully, and well, no matter what others try to steal from around your house. None of that stuff is worth dying or going to prison over.
I did not make the rules concerning the use of lethal force, I just enforced them for a while, tried to stay alive while doing that, and testified in court about it quite a bit as we had a lot of killings in my home town while I wore a badge. If in time the laws have changed, and I am wrong, please tell me.
Good Luck!
