You can actually defend yourself if attacked.
Unlike say, Australia, where you can be criminally charged for pepper-spraying someone who is in the act of breaking into your home.
Not The Bee: Australian man criminally charged for stopping home invader with pepper spray
Yes, really.
Compare to a similar situation in the US but with a much happier ending for the victim in the home, in Illinois of all places:
The Anglosphere seems to be swiftly shrinking away from what it once was.
It happily keeps getting tougher for home invaders to ply their trade in Detroit.
After the past few weeks where 5 home invaders were shot, the latest home invader apparently looked like a nail to the 82-year-old resident of the home he tried to invade.
And quite properly, he got hammered for his temerity to break into another person's home.
The Detroit Free Press: 82-year-old Detroiter uses hammer to fend off home invader
In the living room, officers found a 33-year-old man with blood dripping from his head.Johnson [Director of Media Relations for the DPD] said the man had kicked in a rear window of the house. Once inside, he encountered the 82-year-old man, who hit him on the head with a hammer.
The suspect was treated at the scene for his injury and arrested for home invasion.
Nicely done, that's how about 50 more years of life experience and a decent swing gets you one up on the intruder.
The older man was defending himself and therefore is not expected to face charges, Johnson said.
Gee, you think? That it even needs to be said shows the Detroit mentality still has a ways to improve, but it's getting there.
Good on an 82-year-old for teaching a home invading whippersnapper why you don't break into other people's homes.
I was watching a re-run of Worst Case Scenario - the show where Bear Grylls gets into various catastrophic situations and shows you some skills and how to hopefully survive them.
It's a fun show to watch and bear Grylls has done some amazing things, but at least in the segment I saw, concerning dealing with a home invasion, the advice was in one area glaringly counterproductive.
Unfortunately not seen in this clip, the advice (to paraphrase) was to arm yourself with a bat or golf club but not a gun because deadly force could get you in trouble.
This is wrong on multiple levels.
First, using a bat or golf club against someone will likely land you in the same use of deadly force conundrum if you do it wrong - assault with a deadly weapon or felonious assault depending on how your jurisdiction may name it. You would be charged just as using a firearm would result in the same or similar charges if you do it wrong.
Second, if you're acting in bona fide self-defense -- and defending yourself from a home invader in your house tends to fit that quite well -- you generally won't be charged with an improper use of deadly force and the whole thing becomes rather academic.
Now, Bear Grylls is English and in jolly olde England, using force and defending yourself in your home from an attacker is a no-no, so that may be why he cautions against using a firearm. So for a UK audience the run and hide advice works, but then he really should go all the way and caution against the use of bats and golf clubs - his advice does not fully work in either circumstance or country.
Third, going after an attacker (show to be armed with a handgun later in the segment) with a bat or golf club puts you in a rather dangerous position. You're much, much safer keeping your distance and fending off a home invader with an effective projectile weapon then closing with them and trying to hit them with an impact weapon. Getting in grappling range of an attacker is not great tactics when distance options are available. Heck, Grylls later in the show body checks the attacker down the stairs!
Indeed, if the homeowner has a firearm the invader may hopefully run out of your house screaming at the sight of your firearm and you'll be safe without even having to fire a shot, which is a rather optimal ending -- and you'll be safer for it than charging thorough the house pretending to be Tiger Woods.
Overall, Grylls' advice is rather decent - having a cell phone in your bedroom at night, calling the police as soon as possible, and staying locked in your room or if necessary safely gathering the inhabitants back in the room, or if needed to quickly get out of the house is all good advice.
But, his very tentative, contradictory, and confusing suggestions regarding the use of force and self-defense in case of a home invasion, especially his advice for a home owner to not use a firearm to protect themselves, will likely do more harm than good.
