If I were house sitting, I would first make it obvious someone is there before I go to bed, and if someone entered an obviously occupied home at night, I would treat the situation the same as if it were my own home.
This is all very reasonable and makes perfect sense.
Anyone who would do hot burglaries, is a threat to the safety of every potential future victim, and WILL hurt or kill someone eventually. It is those people I think about, and not the homeowner's "stuff".
The laws in many places acknowledge that persons who commit "hot burglaries" are often a deadly threat and give the homeowner/defender more leeway than would be afforded in a crime that is exclusively about property. However, it's important not to get confused about the difference between self-defense and dispensing justice/preemptive punishment. It's perfectly reasonable to consider the immediate potential threat to you in your response to an attacker but it's questionable, at best, to take action based on what you think the attacker might do in the future if you don't confront him/her. The law gives a defender absolutely zero right/dispensation to base his/her response on what sort of criminal career the defender assumes that the attacker will engage in in the future if not confronted.
Nobody believes possessions are worth killing or dying for, but how naive one must be to assume that these are all harmless people who only have designs on our "stuff", and will be appeased if we allow them to take it.
There's a good bit of wiggle room between not going out and accosting a person in a situation where the outcome has a significant potential to be negative and allowing someone to take your stuff without taking any action at all.
Of course you should call the authorities immediately.
If you have a car made in the last decade or so, it probably has a key fob with a panic alarm on it. Push the button Max!
And, if you don't mind risking death/bankruptcy/incarceration then by all means rush to confront them with your gun and see how the scenario plays out. What's life without a little risk, right? Especially if the risk is over something totally irreplaceable, like an insured automobile, right?
Funny how we all expect the police to protect our "stuff" while refusing to help ourselves.
Property protection needs to be primarily pre-emptive/preventive. Once the property crime is underway, there's very little that can be done without significant risk to one's personal wellbeing, future freedom, and financial health. All of which are generally more important/valuable than the loss incurred by losing the property in question.
Funny how so many people who are so rabid about protecting their "stuff" once there's a criminal trying to take it are so laid back about it the rest of the time.
How much do you think the insurance company will give you for it?
How much do you think getting shot will cost you if you live? How much will retaining a lawyer cost you? How much will a criminal and/or civil defense cost you? If you want to play it by the numbers, you should look at all the possibilities, not just the best possible outcome.
In Texas, the law says that one may use lethal force to defend property.
It is true that in limited circumstances, it is legal to use lethal force to defend property if other avenues are unavailable or would expose the "defender" to risk of death. If the law is examined, many of the situations where lethal force is allowed are actually shaded more towards self-defense than property defense.
It is misleading to make the simple statement that Texas law allows lethal force to defend property without any further amplification--it's a lot more complicated than that. A careful read of those laws is eye-opening.
The laws are as much about about defending life as about defending property. The list of qualifying crimes includes, for example, aggravated robbery and arson, both of which offer significant opportunity for injury or death to innocents. Furthermore, the law makes it clear that deadly force is only authorized when using any other means to prevent the property damage/loss or to recover the property would expose the defender to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.
In most cases when this section of law could be used to justify deadly force, deadly force would likely also be justified under the self-defense section of the Penal Code. Even Texas law, unusual as it is, is much more restrictive than people typically believe.
