Handgun Scenario #3 Burglar In Your Home

 

This scenario is a little touchy in class….

Especially after the last handgun scenario rant about can they kill you and are you afraid…

The kid rock wannabe in your house has no weapon in his hand – you do, that gets tricky.

Obviously if you’re an 80 year old 90 pound great grandma then yeah he can clearly be a threat, but the citizen in the video obviously was no octogenarian.

Tennessee has a special clause in its law for instances like this one.

However,  before I tell you what it is I want you to think about two things.

What items do you have in your home that can be used as a deadly weapon? Do you have a butcher knife, a baseball bat, a gun? Let’s not mention all the improvised weapons – candlesticks, lampposts, letter openers. You are confronted by someone in your house – who knows what manner of dangerous things they may have secreted away that they may kill you with.

You may not have noticed it in the short span of the video, but the bad guy started to move away from the homeowner and toward the back door – but he turned and charged the homeowner (who obviously had a firearm)… Who does that? Someone who is either, not afraid of your gun, thinks they can take it from you, or is desperate enough not to care… Either way – that is dangerous to you.

Tennessee has an exception to the two part rule of when to use force

If someone has forcibly entered your home (you did not invite them) you can automatically assume they have the ability to kill you. If you are in fear that they will try to kill you then the standard is met.

Be very careful with this, there have been people that have killed loved ones thinking they were burglars. In the latter stages of my marriage, I have come home late to find my ex-wife standing at the top of the stairs holding my 12 gauge…

If you want to do more research into this (and you should) this legal principle is called the castle doctrine.

I think this kind of what would you do training is invaluable to preparing a person to carry a gun for self defense. If you never work on handgun scenario training you will have to work through the situation when it occurs – this will waste precious seconds and may cause you to do the wrong thing. Please look at the post on OODA loop for more information.