[OldMarksman]

It greatly disappoints me to hear that some of my fellow countrymen would do so little to actually stop a crime in progress.

So you're telling me that there are no non-law-enforcement citizens in your whole town who would stop a criminal as he was committing a crime?

It does bother me greatly that there are those who will not report a crime in progress or provide information afterwards.

However, the citizen is rarely trained, not equipped, and not chartered to "stop" most crimes; he has no legally sanctioned departmental policies to follow; he cannot call for backup or receive information or instructions from a dispatcher; and he is never indemnified against civil charges should problems develop.

And we did not call for backup ASAP unless we were being overwhelmed.

Law enforcement officers never go in alone except in cases of emergencies, and if a single officer does come upon a crime in progress, he will call for backup.

The object was to engage and destroy the enemy.

That's war. In law enforcement, the duty of the sworn officer is to stop and detain the perp; he can use deadly force only when absolutely necessary to protect himself or others. Nor does the citizen have that right unless he is in imminent danger.

But when confronted by the criminal element, one should not run away when one has the means to engage and stop the criminal.

The civilian may or may not have a legal duty to retreat. And while he may have a weapon, he may only use deadly force to "engage and stop" (effect a citizen's arrest of) a suspect in a couple of places in the country, and there, only under most extreme circumstances not at all like the burglary situation at hand.

There's a big, big difference between law enforcement and military combat, and big difference between the role of the sworn officer and that of a citizen.

It's interesting to muse about the possibility of an armed citizen acting to "stop" crime. It's also quite possible that in so doing, he may well end up committing a crime, perhaps far more serious than the one he endeavored to stop.

I once heard an address by the Chief Counsel for a major corporation. He talked about the travails of a couple of former luminaries who were then serving time for what they had thought to be reasonable acts. He started by rattling off a couple of long numbers, saying that they were not telephone numbers but prisoner numbers. It was chilling.

If any of that happens, our citizen will be regarded as the farthest thing from a hero.

Of course, it's possible that he might prevail in court--maybe broke and perhaps unemployed.

And then, on top of that, there are the issues of the citizen getting killed or maimed, costly civil suits and judgments involving the perp, and the repercussions of a bullet hitting a third party.

And if he does not end up in legal difficulty or get stabbed or shot by a criminal, he stands a reasonably high chance of being taken out by arriving policemen who see him with a gun.

I'll confine my shooting to the range and to lawful self defense.