Status Anxiety

D Short

Well, the next burglar will know where to find a useful, threatening weapon.

And our wonderful police, who just love an easy middle-class collar, might be round before that

Jamal Akhbar

What about sleeping under the bed with the sword, and putting dummy in the bed for the burglars to play with?

Person of Choler

Why don't the people in the UK stand up for a right to defend yourselves? I'd rather take a chance on my ability to deploy a shotgun than to watch my family terrorized by a gang of crackheads. Quit cowering and whimpering.

Anxiously stable

Scariest thing that ever happened to me was waking up to find a burglar rummaging through my house. That was back when I was single. Now, with a wife and two kids to protect, shouting down the stairs to ‘get the f**k out’ might seem a bit pathetic.

Bill Walker

Same pro-burglar conditions apply here. However, one day my 70+ year-old father, in no great health, was out walking using his cane.

A young male came up to him and demanded his money. My father, an old Glasgow rugby player, asked him to repeat the demand, then proceeded to beat the daylights out of him with his cane. The miscreant soon ran off, taking nothing.

This parasite had thought to intimidate an old man who had been imprisoned by the Japanese and beaten by them, and had been through the war as their prisoner. Bad choice.

Toby Young

Person of Choler, I'm not sure my neighbours' ordeal would have worked out better if they'd had a shotgun in the bedroom. Who knows what might have happened? As it was, he and his wife escaped completely unscathed -- and, I should add, the police caught the three crack heads a few days later and they were tried, convicted and sent to prison. If the husband had "taken the chance" you're recommending, he might now be in prison.

Bob

There are two separate issues here - Tactical and Legal.

Tactical: Having secure weapons readily available is always useful and prudent. If other precautions are taken, it is most unlikely that someone will gain entrance and attack you without your being able to arm yourself in time to kill them as they come in.

Legal: The problem here is that you are not really a citizen of a free country. You are a subject of the state, a ward of the court. You have no rights. In principle, you could rectify this situation, but you are evidently satisfied with your subservient condition, having become accustomed to it over many centuries. Your rulers tell you that you cannot resist, and you are so willfully stupid as to believe them. You deserve your fate.

Around here (Colorado), we call the cops to retrieve the bodies.

@iJuli

Terrifying. I agree that having a gun in the bedroom probably would not have helped, maybe a security check to see what can be done to keep them on the outside.

James Windros

Shouldn't the firt line read, "I saw a burglar last week"? When did you catch him?

Andy

Here in South Australia, we have a law which protects anyone acting in self-defence against home invasion. Amazing what the very thought of a gun can do. The trick is, though: be trained, ready - and prepared - to use it. Don't even think about it if you're not.

iron mike

I think that depending on the kindness of crack heads not to cause harm to one's family is at best a poor substitute for simple courage. I would rather go to jail knowing I had protected my family. Bob is right. Instead of complaining you should do something about your subservience.