To think that if you get stabbed by the owner of the house you're trying to rob...

[BupcakesandCunting]

That it's an occupational hazard of being a burglar?

Obviously I am NOT glad that someone has died here but if you break into a property, you cannot guarantee that you will come out of it very well off. If someone broke into my house, I don't know how I would react but if I felt that my family were under threat and I was panicking, I imagine it would be very easy to go OTT and the other person come off worse.

I know that the law says that you're supposed to use "reasonable force" but heat of the moment/panicking etc etc...

What does everyone else think?

How do you know spuddy what someone's intent is? People have been raped beaten or killed during burglaries. That's the problem you don't that the guy in your bedroom just wants your telly do you? Don't get me wrong if some twat broke in my shed then fucked off when the lights went on I wouldn't chase after him. But if someone was in my home in my safe space I wouldn't question his intent, I would hit him with a baseball bat.

I wonder what your obligation would be with regard to calling off your dog?

After a spate of burglaries in our former village, our neighbours got a guard dog, which would have responded to me. But after being burgled twice I am not sure I would have rushed to call the dog off any intruder he managed to catch.

There was a guy in Adelaide I think who broke into the home of a samurai master and ended up dead. Research, do some.

I wouldn't hesitate in trying to kill someone I found in my home like that. That is the risk they take. It is my house and I will not be afraid.

I wouldn't kill someone for snatching my bag, I might punch them in head if the opportunity arose, but you break into my house where my children are? It is me or you in that situation I don't give a fuck what the law says.

I am big and physically fit, but even if I wasn't I would still try to kill them, how fucking dare they?

Very easy to avoid being killed by a homeowner during a robbery, I manage it every day.

I have NO sympathy for burglars who get injured or even fatally wounded in situations like these. Don't burgle people's houses or suffer consequences. My parents' house was burgled when I was young and it is awful coming home to a house that has been turned upside down.

So, if the law in the UK made it clear that people were allowed to defend their property without fear of punishment then do you think the burgalry ate would go up, down,or stay the same?

In other words there is no down-side to clarifying the law......

The guy in Adelaide sounds like a case study for a due diligence fuck-up.

I have to say my hunch would be if residents were given carte blanche to defend their property things would become South African very quickly - I'd imagine that burglars would come armed to the teeth. I would exepct slightly fewer but much more violent burglaries.

I work on the theory that if you break into my house, I'll break open your head.

Bag snatching on the street is completely incomparable to a burglary while you are home IMHO. The intent in both may be to simply relieve me of the burden of having stuff, but the method is so wholly different as to require a different response. On the street there likely would be other witnesses and people to support me after the fact. It is also much more evident that the mugger was only after my bag after they snatched it and ran away. Some stereotypically big burly bloke creeping up my stairs in the middle of the night, in my home has not broadcast the same intentions to just take stuff and could well be there for even more nefarious reasons.

TBH the very real fear that an unknown person in my home in the middle of the night may be intending to rape or attack or steal away me or my kids (they'd drop me under the first streetlight and the second the kids opened their gobs, but that's neither here nor there ) would be enough to make virtually any action of mine reasonable in my defence IMO. That is probably why I am not allowed to make laws

WRT the people saying "knock the burglar down = fine and reasonable, hitting him while down = not" I do agree to an extent. If the guy (I realise some burglars are women, but for the sake of laziness i am going with the majority stats that say burglar = man) is down, not moving at all and looks to be unconscious then yeah, fine, stop beating him about the head with that hideous ornament Aunty Vera got you. But what if it is dark and you can't see or tell if he is unconscious or not? If you are scared enough to hit in the first place, that fear won't abate until the threat is definitely removed so I can easily see how someone may find themselves in the position of having kept on hitting after it was no longer necessary. That doesn't mean they have got a few licks in as punishment, or were looking for an excuse to kill, it just means that they were terrified for their safety and couldn't tell that the threat had passed.

Ooh new thought. I wonder where the law stands on knocking a burglar out twice?

What i mean by that is what if someone breaks into PiousPalace and I knock him out, a nice one hit with a frying pan Andy Cap special, and he goes down, but being as I live in a rural area it takes the police a while to get to me. What if the burglar starts to stir and come round before they arrive? Would it be reasonable to twat them again or would that be excessive force?

If I had an unconscious burglar in my hallway, I'm not sure if I would feel safer waiting for the police outside in case he woke up all pissed off at being hit, in case he had mates outside as well, or if it would be better to stand over him and make sure he stayed unconscious until the police arrived or to barricade myself into a secure room and wait it out. I suspect I would opt for standing over him, as if I had had the reaction of clobbering him I would probably want to damn well make sure was caught so couldn't come round and do one, but where would that put me in the eyes of the law I wonder? [pondering face]

Burglars should be afraid of my frying pans. I have Le Creuset, in a choice of sizes according to the blunt force trauma they would prefer.

I wouldn't go for a knife, I don't know anything about knife fighting and the chances of me ending up dead are higher.

Because I am weird I have an idea at all times as to what would make a good weapon in the event of an emergency. Much like a zombie plan!

Everyone should have a zombie plan. They are very adaptable and useful in a range of scenarios; burglary, nuclear apocalypse, snow storm cutting off access to the outside world... Frankly, it is only sensible to plan for the inevitable day when the hoards of the reanimated dead male their assault on the world.

A few years ago I heard a noise downstairs and found a complete stranger standing in my kitchen.It gave me a terrible shock but it turned out it was a district nurse come to see a 'Mr Thompson' but got the wrong house.What if i'd assumed she was a burglar and shot her!

tbh I think the term reasonable force is very subjective.

For example, if someone breaks into your house and you hear them coming up the stairs, you grab a heavy object such as that maglight you keep next to the bed and batter them over the head with it as they come up that's possibly reasonable. But if you hear them coming up the stairs and going into the spare room, you slip past down into the kitchen, grab a knife and come back up with it and stab them is that reasonable?

Surely the former is a reflex reaction, whereas the latter shows specific intent. And while I certainly think that individuals should be able to defend themselves, I think there's a fine line between self defence and intended harm in the name of self defence.

I am personally not a hero. If someone mugged me in the street I would hand over whatever it was they wanted. If someone broke into my house I would call the police and hide.

I think only if I was being physically threatened would I fight back. I have two dogs though and while they are certainly not agressive I am positive they would bark at any intruder and should they choose to bite him I wouldn't call them off.

we were burgled while sleeping some years ago and my husband works away often for weeks at a time. I started sleeping with my biggest kitchen knife just under my bed and my bathrobe tucked under my bedroom door. If I got the chance to defend myself and my children from an unknown threat (burglar/rapist/killer) I would make sure he couldn't get up again.

Shrug, I don't care if it is unreasonable or not. On this subject I would be caught somewhere between blind rage and terror and would quite happily kill them. I am not nice, I don't care about the law when it comes to protecting my kids. The law isn't relevant in the moment I suspect. I would shoot someone in the back if they broke into my house (well I wouldn't now because we don't have any guns in the house). Shoot them twice to make sure they are not getting up again.

Tough shit, don't break into my house.

The world is divided into those who cower and those who fight, I won't cower while people walk all over me.

My zombie plan is to join the undead horde, much easier, lots of brain munching and no running about trying to stay alive.

Hang on, to the folk touting the Martin case as one where it was "householder used unreasonable force - he shot the guy in the back"... didn't the guy get targetted repeatedly by breakins in the preceeding months leading up to the death?

Wasn't he repeatedly a victim of attempted or successful breakins?

And wasn't this on a farm in the middle of nowhere, hardly a London basement flat where your screams for help might get noticed?

It's hardly a case to discuss outside of context, is it? These things matter.

And for what it's worth, I'm with the group who think that 1 little "reasonable" hit is more likely to provoke an intruder and make the situation worse.

When I get broken into/mugged or otherwise become the victim of a crime:

1. if I think i can't defend myself like I was outnumbered, I'm happy to roll over and say "here's the PIN, take it, leave us alone"

2. If I wasnt thinking or i thought i'd could pull it off, I'm hitting, stabbing, kicking to take them down. I'm not waiting to see their reaction when they see I'm fighting, not in flight. If I defend myself, I'm going to take it to the point where that fucker is knocked out or dead. I'm not ever going to kosh someone on the head with "reasonable" force and hope they take it as a warning.

I guess the options are extreme (comply 100% or aim to incapacitate them completely) - but what other choice does someone like me, who has no self defense training or particular agility and a family to protect supposed to do?

I'm sitting here at the idea some people would attempt to put up a fight but only give off little warning signals first - a slight tap, a push, a warning shout.

That's more likely to get my killed. And me and my own are worth a thousand times more than the scumbags who don't get punished by the "justice" (snort) system.

p.s. If I chose Option 2 (taking them out completely) I'd happily get charged with murder or battery than risk the chance that attacker is there for more than my TV e.g. in the case where a poster mentioned a burglar outside DD's room.

I have a big wooden club thing with a ball on the end like the messiah use and I keep it near my bed but hidden. I am a single mum, if anyone came near me or DS believe me I would use it with all the strength I had. I have become much more paranoid since being alone. It was a gift from family that had been to Zanzibar but now has turned into my piece of mind at night. Silly really as I live in a place with such a low crime rate you wouldn't believe. Though I don't agree with violence I think wanting to protect yourself in your own home is normal and understandable.

Morloth said:

"I am not nice, I don't care about the law when it comes to protecting my kids. The law isn't relevant in the moment I suspect. I would shoot someone in the back if they broke into my house (well I wouldn't now because we don't have any guns in the house). Shoot them twice to make sure they are not getting up again."

Exactly.

I'm not nice either. I don't care about the law either.

My first responsibility is to protect me and my family. That's it.

Consideration of the law is a luxury you don't have time to mull over when someone's in your house.

Totally agree with you....

If someone invades your home then they should expect to get a reaction.

My DH is not a violent man...but if someone broke into our home he would do whatever it took to protect us and our property (I believe he keeps a baseball bat handy just in case).

If the person was armed though he would have to just let them take whatever they wanted.

I think the courts will have to be sympathetic in this case. They'll want to know all the details.

The problem in the UK is that term "reasonable", it can't be quantified so you don't know where you stand. I think that is all that most people want clarified, but you can just see the collective sucking of teeth from the legal sector.

InTheNightKitchen, the problem is that as a homeowner it's not really a choice whether to break the law or not, is it, if you're a 5 foot 1 inch woman like me faced with a burly intruder? A bit of a Hobson's choice no matter how you look at it. "tap them to see what reaction you get / to avoid being prosecuted for unreasonable force" isn't much of a choice in that situation.

The criminals setting out to rob and maim householders had a choice about whether to participate in a criminal act.

but Morloth and fgaaaagh don't sound like they are using unreasonable force. The law does need to be clearer on this. Unreasonable to me would be chasing them down the street and killing/shooting them or continuing to harm them when you have them unconscious or tied up - anything else is fair game.