Burglar Load

Invading people’s privacy and stealing is crappy, burglars are scum.

But promoting firearms violence no matter who it’s directed at is also crappy, especially on a widely read blog. This is an irresponsible post – and raises concerns about holding a firearm license.

It is a no-brainer. The home invaders might have a gun so the occupier needs to cause sufficient trauma to immediately incapacitate the intruders. A NZ police issue Glock and ammo would be ideal but problematical for a householder to have. So the householder is stuck with a shotgun so it comes down to whatever cartridges would inflict the most damage at short range.

We should be thankful that NZ cops generally use common sense for such self defence situations. Presume if that Auckland pharmacist lived in UK he too would have spent 40 hours in the clink after his ‘bare hands’ self defence resulted in the death of the little s**t who broke into his shop.

Best to quote the relevant part of our law. As much as we’d like to send Mr Burglar to hell unless he threatens you then you can’t do much. If he breaks in & walks around grabbing your stuff & walks out again the shotgun remedy is just going to bring you a whole lot of trouble.

31 SECTION 48 of the Crimes Act 1961 provides:

Everyone is justified in using, in the defence of himself or another, such force
as, in the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use.

Burglar situation almost always means inside a house.

Inside a house means short range.

Short range means low spread anyway, but I’d favour low spread if only to minimise the redecorating required.

As others have noted, only “reasonable force” can be used in this circumstance.
1) If they are running away, don’t shoot them, you will be charged and lose your firearms licence
2) Any firearm wounds in the offenders back will cause the same as above
3) Shout and scream a la AOS to get on the floor while sighting them up, you could well scare them shitless and avoid all the drama caused by a charge and trial
4) If there are multiple burglars I reckon the use of a firearm becomes more reasonable as their advantage of numbers requires greater force to suppress.
5) Any personal threat against you or your family increases the scope of reasonable, as we are all ordinary folk, not hardened criminals. You’d have to take that threat seriously.

If there is an intruder, then there is a chance that they will harm me or my family no matter how innocent and ‘ only stealing ‘ they may look. Even if that chance is 1 in 1000 I would rather kill them than risk it. Attitudes like mineand otherson this blog are the only thing that stops criminals running even more rampant than they do.

I imagine the sound of a pump action shotgun being loaded at close range would offer immense comfort to someone whose home is being broken into – and scare the crap outta the thug(s) trying to steal/rape/murder your family.
With all the violent offenders out there – it’s probably better to explain your actions to 12 of your peers in court – than offering nothing whilst being carried on the shoulders of 6 friends.

For many years I have reloaded my own ammo but the current price of ammo makes reloading unpractical. Still, have experimented with various loads with various degrees of devastation resulting. The most fun load we have used is a wheat and rock salt load. Many years ago the road was plagued with dogs that would come out of their driveways and try to rip the retreads off passing vehicles and scare the shit out of kids on push bikes. With sufficient reloaded cartridges we requisitioned my cousins Ute and commenced to cruising the road. Such great fun to be chased by dogs, bark and snapping as we went pass driveways. Even better fun seeing their back legs caving in as they tumbled down the road with a load of rock salt and wheat in their arses. Amazingly the problem of out of control dogs disappeared over night. Many locals believing their animals had found God, such was their new found love of house and home.