When someone invades your home in the dead of night, with your family asleep, what options do you have?

Better shoot and ask questions later. Better having the option of plea bargaining later than being dead and the home invader taking up the option. The prevalence of soft-cock sentencing judges anyway, means that worst case is you’ll be out and back home in a few years.

No brainer.

A nation has Defence to legitimately defend itself. So too does a home owner. Two effective options are (1) a defensive handgun in the bedside chest of drawers and (2) a trained guard dog kept off the lead. One benefit of the dog is that worst case after the dog has killed the intruder, that the authorities say Max has to be put down for being a “dangerous dog”. Not good but better than your family being assaulted or killed by the intruding shit.

If the system sux, then work around it.

And so it was that a 33-year old homeowner in Newcastle north of Sydney discovered a home intruder well inside his house around 3.30am last Saturday after Good Friday, right outside his daughter’s bedroom. WTF?

The intruder, an Aboriginal man one Richard Slater (34), had no right to be there.

A fight ensued. The invader suffered injuries and later died in hospital. No sympathy except for the terrorised invaded family.

Well done to the home owner for defending his home and family. Anything could have happened. Was the invader armed? On ICE? Was there more than one? In the dead of night in your home what are you supposed to do; think straight, or just follow defensive instinct?

This serial burglar, Richard Slater, lost all rights the moment he invaded

Regrettably, the hero homeowner was then charged by police with recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm after tackling the 34-year-old home invader/thief putting the scum in a choke hold to deal with the home invasion. Since then the criminal subsequently had his life support turned off in hospital, and the police have decided to upgrade their charge to murder.

It’s wrong, it was self-defence. But hey, better than the other way around. The home owner and his family are alive to tell the tale.

In Louisiana, a person may use lethal force on someone they believe is an intruder with criminal intent. It’s called the ‘Castle Doctrine’ – my home is my castle. You invade it, I have a right to defend it, whatever it takes. Richard Slater, a serial burglar, had criminal intent and no rights.

The Castle Doctrine

Castle Doctrine is a legal treatise that formulates around the philosophy that “a man’s home is his castle.”

It provides legal presumption of an intruder’s intent to inflict serious bodily harm or death to the homeowners simply by their unlawful entrance into said home. Castle Doctrine relieves the homeowner from their duty to abandon their home or their obligation to announce their intentions to use deadly force when defending themselves and/or their property.

In summary, Castle Doctrine:

Automatically relieves the “victim” of having to leave their property when a break-in happens
Automatically proves the attacker’s intent to do harm simply because they broke in.

With Castle Doctrine, someone unlawfully entering your property will legally provide proof of your intruder’s intent, but it still leaves the burden of proving their ability and opportunity to do serious physical injury on you.

This is normally a very important and essential key to someone’s justification of their use of deadly force in self-defence because in most states of the US your legal defence will consist of having to provide evidence of your attacker’s Ability, Opportunity, and Intent to do serious physical injury to you (or someone else), otherwise known as an Affirmative Defence.

Self-defence is a complete defence throughout Australia. This means that if you raise self-defence in a case, the prosecution must then prove beyond reasonable doubt that you did NOT act in self-defence – otherwise, you must be found ‘not guilty’.

Under Section 418(2) the New South Wales Crimes Act 1900, a person is not guilty of an offence if they were:

1. Defending themselves or someone else
2. Preventing or ending unlawful deprivation of liberty of themselves or someone else
3. Defending their property from being taken unlawfully, destroyed, damaged or interfered with
4. Preventing criminal trespass to any land or to remove a person committing criminal trespass

However, self-defence is not available if the person has either intentionally or recklessly caused death for above reasons three and four.

And even if you are protecting yourself or someone else, the actions you take must a reasonable response to the threat as you perceive it.

This means that:

You must believe that there is a threat
Your belief must be on reasonable grounds, and
Your response must be reasonable to that threat.

This means that honest and reasonable belief amount to self-defence even if the belief is mistaken.

Using excessive force can be used as a partial defence to murder– in some circumstances, reducing a charge of murder to manslaughter.

Excessive self-defence inflicting death occurs when:

• You believe that your conduct is necessary to defend yourself or another person (or prevent unlawful deprivation of liberty), but
• Your conduct is not reasonable in the circumstances

This may apply where you believe that your conduct was necessary to protect yourself or another person, but that conduct was not a reasonable response to the situation.

Richard Slater was a big man and considerable force would have been necessary to restrain him.

More satisfying would have been a very mean guard dog to the neck, or simply a bullet or six in the protection of life, limb, and property..

In South Carolina, homeowners have a legal right to ‘Stand your Ground‘ and to own and use a hand gun in self defence of one’s home against and intruder. Australia could do with such laws here.

Such laws should apply especially to western Sydney against all the serial Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Sudanese home invaders.

Better still, all such foreign black filth should be deported back to where they came from.

Example:

10 Low-Recoil Defensive Handguns, by B. Gil Horman – Friday, March 4, 2016, http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2016/3/4/10-low-recoil-defensive-handguns/