Gun Owners - If you came home and found someone ransacking your place would you shoot first and ask questions later?

Never.

Quietly exit and call the police.

Foremost, I don’t have a concealed carry permit, so if I suspected someone to be ransacking my house, I would call the cops, as I’d be defenseless and they would have access to my guns in the house.

If someone invaded my home, I would turn my gun on them, but only fire if I was actually threatened. I don’t want to kill anyone and I don’t want to deal with the legal clusterf*ck that results from shooting someone.

I would hold them at gunpoint until the police arrived.

In short, I want to avoid shooting someone as much as possible, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use a gun as a deterrent in one of your aforementioned scenarios.

I despise guns and would never own one.

If I came home and found such a situation I would get away from my house and call the police. I live alone, so they can have anything I own, none of which is worth killing or dying for.

There is a pretty good chance of them getting shot.

I would only shoot someone who was a danger to my family or myself. Property crimes are not capital crimes, so I would put down the gun, pick up a phone, and call the police.

I’d hold the gun on them until police arrived.
If they threatened me or my family or pulled out a weapon non gun, I’d shoot them in the leg.
If they pulled out a gun, they are getting shot to die.

Hell yea ! .. I’d empty the magazine on their ass.

I find that guns serve as a great deterrent even if they are never fired.

If they appear to be unarmed then there is little legal basis to claim self-defense, so staying out of jail will be tricky, especially if they really are unarmed. And if they are unarmed and you have a gun pointed at them, chances are that they aren’t going to do anything stupid unless you make a serious enough tactical error that you probably shouldn’t have a gun in the first place.

Personally, I would have a hard time shooting someone unless there was a legitimate threat to my physical safety, and if I actually pulled the trigger it would be a Mozambique drill . I would never point a gun at anything/anyone I wasn’t prepared to destroy, and if I actually have to fire, something/someone is getting destroyed.

@jerv That’s wrong .. they’re only a good deterrent when fired .. also, they are a hell of a lot more fun.

If all they are doing is damaging my things, I would quietly note down their license number and vehicle and then call the cops.

If they are injuring or threatening any living creatures, including my pets and family members, then possibly I would shoot.

@Saschin I guess you are the type of person who has no ability to predict the future, no foresight at all, and just live in teh moment, not actually thinking that something can happen until it actually does.
However, most people (even many children) have enough brains to look at a gun pointed at them, draw the association between guns and sucking chest wounds, and decide that they don’t want holes put in them.

As for fun, I gotta admit that target shooting has a certain joy to it. Zen Archery may have been designed for the bow, but shooting a gun can be the same in many ways.

The castle law in my state says I have no duty to retreat and if faced with an attack upon my dwelling may stand my ground and kill the attacker.

If I go inside and find someone in there, I have no intention of finding out if they are a lethal threat until after they’ve been neutralized, if that means lethal force so be it. On the other hand if I come home and it’s clear my house has been broken into, I’m not going inside, I’ll just call the cops and let them take care of it.

Does someone have the right to? IMO and in that situation absolutely, for the simple reason that if you’re mistaken in the assessment of the danger that person poses it may well cost you your life.

Holding a gun on them? if I haven’t shot them already, sure.

No, I wouldn’t want to shoot them outright but I’d hold a gun on them and hope police showed up.

@wonderingwhy I moved from one state that had the “Castle doctrine” in the lawbooks to another, and it’s amazing how low the rates of home-invasion crimes like that are in both places.

1. Couple shots to the leg should slow him down enough, assuming you don’t hit an artery.
2. My standard burglar alarm is a recording of my buddys 12 gauge and a doberman growling

I have been shooting since I was 4 yo. growing up in Oklahoma I think I would do the same thing a non gun owner would do. Call the police avoid contact and be a good witness and probably let a neighbor know. However if attacked upon getting home I would fight back to survive.You dont ever pull a weapon until your life is in danger,also you dont brandish a weapon unless the situation calls for it and only if your willing to use that weapon to protect your life.
Responsible grounded shooters do not want to shoot someone. A soda can yes a person no.
Thats the difference between trained people and people who want to be considered bad ass’s because they can use force, it deters having to use force.An example of that behavior is above.^ Hope that helps.

Forgot to also include that shooting someone in the leg your odds of hitting an artery are 3 times greater. So when they say “shoot to kill” if you shoot them in the leg you might want to break out your black suit.