You're right. The reason shouldn't matter... if they are breaking into a home that act in itself should be recognized as a violent act that can be repelled with deadly force. It can be reasonably acknowledged that any person in their own home has nowhere to retreat to beyond the threshold of their home. The home is your castle, dwelling...no person has any other place that is sacrosanct like their dwelling.
Fleeing or taking a bound to another position? Might be hard to tell...
Down here States have their own rules.
Basically there are 3 main types of rules for ones home.
1) ‘Stand your ground’ Castle Doctrine states.
When Florida adopted this there was a lot of talk about blood in the streets. Pretty much turned out to be a nothing burger, as reasonable people where not suckering people into their houses to kill them (shocking I know).
2) Duty to Retreat: yeah believe it or not some states don’t support any defense of property (mostly those New England hand wringers like MA, CT, NY, ME - but not New Hampshire with its Live Free or Die moniker!)
Where you need to actively withdraw deeper into your domicile if pressured. Albeit you still have self defense protections, and no state requires you to leave your property.
3) No Deadly Force for Property. Most states are generally like this, in that one cannot use Deadly force in defense of property, but Duty to Retreat isn’t codified. So you can confront an intruder while armed but can’t proactively engage if they aren’t a threat to you or your family. Note: in the US we have fleeing felon laws where deadly force can be used to stop a felon from fleeing (some states however limit this to LE application only). With that in mind, in some states, property offenses can become felonies due to nature or dollar value - and thus the offender can be legally shot dead.
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Which all leads into what I call Kevin’s Rules for property defense:
1) Dial 911
2) Be a Good Witness
3) Don’t try to be a Hero
4) Avoid direct confrontation of possible
5) Only confront if defending life or limb (and yes I will shoot people for my dog’s safety).
6) If you do use force: Get a lawyer and do not speak to LE without a lawyer, other than to tell responding officers:
- your name
- safety situation (family okay in bedroom, attacker is in foyer bleeding etc)
- location of any weapons used.
- you have an attorney on the way, and won’t be able to give a statement until talking to them (same for ones family).
None of the LEO’s responding should take that personally, if they do, well sucks to be them, as pretty much all LE Unions/Associations and collective agreements allow for 24-48hrs after a UoF incident, and meeting with attorneys before making a statement.